The Bricks that Built the Houses

Paperback ₹550.00 Ebook (Epub & Mobi) ₹440.00 Ebook (Epub & Mobi) ₹440.00

₹550.00

Buy Now

Description

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

Award-winning poet and rapper Kate Tempest's electrifying debut novel takes us into the beating heart of the capital in this multi-generational tale of drugs, desire and belonging.

It gets into your bones. You don't even realise it, until you're driving through it, watching all the things you've always known and leaving them behind.

Young Londoners Becky, Harry and Leon are leaving town in a fourth-hand Ford Cortina with a suitcase full of money. They are running from jealous boyfriends, dead-end jobs, violent maniacs and disgruntled drug dealers, in the hope of escaping the restless tedium of life in south-east London – the place they have always called home.

As the story moves back in time, to before they had to leave, we see them torn between confidence and self-loathing, between loneliness and desire, between desperate ambition and the terrifying prospect of getting nothing done.

In The Bricks that Built The Houses Kate Tempest explores contemporary city life with a powerful moral microscope, giving us irresistible stories of hidden lives, and showing us how the best intentions don't always lead to the right decisions

Product details

Published	09 Mar 2017
Format	Paperback
Edition	1st
Extent	416
ISBN	9781408857335
Imprint	Bloomsbury USA
Dimensions	198 x 129 mm
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing

Author

Kae Tempest

Kae Tempest is a poet. He is also a writer, a lyri…

[The Bricks that Built the Houses] marks the arrival of a significant new voice . . . deeply affecting: cinematic in scope; touching in its emphatic humanity . . . Tempest's voice--by turns raging and tender--never falters. By the time the novel reaches its cleareyed climax, cleverly undercutting its own promised happy ending, the reader is left with the impression of a work that hums with human life.

New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
A novel that perfectly captures the modern trials and tribulations of youth and urban life in London.

BuzzFeed
Tempest has a knack for the devastating throwaway line--a skill-honed, no doubt, from years of rapping and spoken-word performances. [Their] work is rich with underlinable lines . . . Captivating.

New Yorker
[Tempest is] a Zadie Smith if Smith were in her 20s again . . . An artistic prodigy . . . [Their] captivating The Bricks That Built the Houses is rich in detail, clever in plot and filled with characters who live on the edge but never quite give up.

Shelf Awareness
With a scope that rivals Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, Tempest juggles themes of family, history, and womanhood.

Booklist
This is a bold, bright, beguiling novel; a lustrous pageant that dazzles and grips . . . [Tempest] may well be unstoppable.

Sunday Telegraph