How to follow a critically acclaimed debut novel? With an explosive story that questions British identity and nods to Charles Dickens
Guy Gunaratne was 16 on 9/11. On a London bus, in fact, when a friend called to say that the Twin Towers had fallen. Four years later, on 7/7, Gunaratne’s father phoned, warning against going into central London. The memories are a little hazy. But, when diving into the past, murky recollections are often more evocative than contemporary news reports. “I think it’s preferable to simmer with your feelings and memories, however imperfect they are,” the writer, now 38, says. “They’re coated with a weird, dark nostalgia.”
We are discussing these traumatic events, in a central-London café in February, because they provide a backdrop for Gunaratne’s new novel. Mister, Mister, which is out later this month, recounts the story of Yahya Bas, the son of an absentminded English woman and just-plainabsent Iraqi father, growing up in a communal house in east London. Mister, Mister follows Yahya’s journey from child of the 1990s to Islamic poet-preacher and eventual exile in Syria, snappily told in episodes and propelled by an unsettled energy, largely thanks to the novel’s conversational set-up: present-day Yahya is recounting his life from a UK detention centre to an inscrutable officer (the “Mister” of the book’s title).
Yahya is an incisive narrator. While watching Princess Diana’s funeral, he notes: “You mourn your martyrs in masses, Mister, as if it were easier to revel in a spectacle than to acknowledge any pain of your own.” Mister, Mister is full of these disarming observations about British life, the kind only people with insider knowledge could make. Gunaratne, who uses they/them pronouns, grew up part of a Sri Lankan family in Neasden, northwest London, and now divides their time between the UK and Malmö, Sweden. Their first novel, 2018’s In Our Mad and Furious City, was a multi-perspective retelling of 48 hours following an act of violence closely resembling the 2013 murder of the soldier Lee Rigby. It scooped a handful of awards and was longlisted for the Booker. The recognition the novel had was lovely; the attention Gunaratne received was less welcome. So they followed some timehonoured advice: ignore all the criticism, good and bad, and start the next thing immediately.
The voice of the next book was there for Gunaratne right away: “Spiky, and intriguing in a way that was discomforting”. After you acclimatise to Yahya’s idiosyncratic voice, Mister, Mister is an engrossing romp through recent UK history, underpinned by the constant question: what does it mean to be British? Gunaratne wrote the novel between 2016 and 2022, a period that offered pl
