Mister, Mister

I wish I could declare a national reading day in Britain where adults read the same book together, beginning with Mister, Mister. Gunaratne fits a whole nation inside one complex character and in doing so shows us our bones and our souls. Brimming with compassion and Dickensian in its breadth, this incredibly important book eviscerates othering and insists that Britain claim a new identity

Leone Ross

It's the effervescence and emotional depth of their writing that make Mister, Mister a knockout

Big Issue

This book tears through you. A searing, shocking odyssey through faith, fury, and the boiling despair at the heart of our age

Musa Okwonga

Gunaratne is a writer with a rare ability to inhabit savants, outsiders, rebels and others who exist at the so-called margins of mainstream society, and who they write slapbang into the centre. Moving between women's houses and detention centres, global and UK politics, tenderness and devastation, Mister, Mister is where it's at

Isabel Waidner

Such a sharp and clever book that absolutely refuses easy interpretation. It's about language and faith and extremism and ideas of home and identity and freedom. But also about the opposite of all that - an undoing of identity. One of those really refreshing books that truly doesn't feel like anything I've read before, and one I'm still thinking about

Anna James

This devastating new novel from Guy Gunaratne confirms them as a writer at the top of their game. They balance an experimental structure with an indelible voice, exploring global, social politics and resolve with ease. Their use of language, precision, thoughtfulness and humanity, make this is the book you will all be reading in 2023

Nikesh Shukla

Incisive... an engrossing romp through recent UK history, underpinned by the question: what does it mean to be British?

Esquire

Thrillingly unstable, as verbally roiling as a pirate radio broadcast, animated by a charismatic antihero prone to "rampant wilding bents". At the same time, what makes it so important is how, like Preti Taneja's Aftermath or the poetry of Bhanu Kapil, it's also drawn to silence and hermeticism: to brown opacity

Guardian

Brilliantly evocative of the effects of recent horrors many people are all-too keen to forget, Gunaratne's latest affirms that they are a writer with a unique voice and a magnificent ear for dialogue

Booklist

Vivid. Gunaratne is a skilful storyteller who imaginatively confronts the complexity of identity and unbelonging in Britain

New Statesman

A provocative powder-keg of a novel. The first-person narrator is so compelling

The Times