Forest Gate
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409076063
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192

Forest Gate

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At once personal and authentic, a story of redemptive love set in the midst of London's urban decay.

In a community where poverty is kept close and passed from one generation to the next, two teenage boys, best friends Ashvin and James, stand on top of twin tower blocks. Facing each other across the abyss of London's urban sprawl, they say their goodbyes in the final stages of a suicide pact. The boys jump together, each with a rope around his neck. Only Ashvin dies. James awakes in hospital, struggling with guilt and faced with his dysfunctional family, a well-meaning psychologist and, eventually, Ashvin's grieving sister Armeina.

Forest Gate is narrated by Armeina, a young refugee from Somalia who, with the death of her brother, suffers the loss of her entire family. As she tells the story of her brother's life and seeks to understand why he would kill himself, she finds herself drawn to James. Seeking comfort from each other, and desperate to rebuild their lives, James and Armeina form a special bond and together set out to find a place they can both call home.

Set in London, Somalia and Brazil, Peter Akinti's debut is a beautifully wrought, profoundly affecting and sometimes violent novel rich in the true history of our time. Armeina and James's journey towards life through their past is, ultimately, a powerful story of redemptive love.
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409076063
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 192
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About the author

Peter Akinti

Peter Akinti was born in East London to Nigerian parents. He read law at London University and worked for five years in the Legal Department of HM Treasury in Westminster. He was the founder and editor of Untold magazine. Peter now lives in New York and is working on his second novel.

Praise for Forest Gate

A very bleak picture indeed, and very well told'

William Leith, Observer

Tautly constructed, graphic, angry, powerful fiction

Catherine Taylor, The Guardian

A powerful account of life among the dispossessed in contemporary east London

The London Paper

Beautifully written first novel

The Times

Akinti shows us he is a competent craftsman

Trevor Lewis, Sunday Times

Written in a clipped, street smart prose, Forest Gate is an assured debut... it is a study in cultural uprootedness and displacement, memorably documented by Akinti

Ian Thomson, Times Literary Supplement

A short but densely textured read...James's gradual, fragile redemption...is very well conveyed. Peter Akinti is also good at conveying a sense of place

Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday