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'Londonstani': A Streetside Slice of Culture

Gautam Malkani's debut novel was reportedly the subject of a bidding war at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year.
Gautam Malkani's debut novel was reportedly the subject of a bidding war at the Frankfurt Book Fair last year.

Laden with vernacular and violence, Gautam Malkani's debut novel Londonstani follows four South Asian teenage kids in London's rough-and-tumble Hounslow borough.

Malkani, who was born in West London, is a journalist for the Financial Times. He talks with Scott Simon about the novel, which he completed not long after the terrorist bombings on the London Underground last July.

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