We Move: 'Excellent stories, told with skill and verve' Jon McGregor

A debut collection of short stories by Gurnaik Johal explores the lives of immigrants in West London, exploring themes of identity, culture, and belonging. The stories are filled with vivid characters and surprising connections, and showcase Johal's talent for storytelling.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 240 pages
Publication date: 06 April 2023
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd

A debut collection of such remarkable precocity and aplomb that it stands comparison to the likes of Junot Díaz and Bryan Washington, Observer Moving, truthful, straight from the heart. Neel Mukherjee. These are excellent stories, told with skill and verve. Jon McGregor. Here, beneath the planes circling Heathrow, various lives connect. Priti speaks English, and her nani Punjabi. Without Priti's mum around, they struggle to make a shared language. Not far away, Chetan and Aanshi's relationship shifts when a woman leaves her car in their drive but never returns to collect it. Gujan's baba steps out of his flat above the chicken shop for the first time in years to take his grandson on a bicycle tour of the old and changed neighborhood. And returning home after dropping out of university, Lata grapples with a secret about her estranged family friend, now a chart-topping rapper in a crisis of confidence. Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal's debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.

Weight: 192g
Dimension: 129 x 198 x 18 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781788169479
Edition number: Main