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A Stranger City

Winner of the Wingate Literary Prize 2020

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A Stranger City

By: Linda Grant
Narrated by: Olivia Dowd
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WINNER OF THE WINGATE LITERARY PRIZE 2020 `A superb piece of writing about London life. Past Wingate winners include Zadie Smith, Amos Oz and David Grossman'


'[A] shimmering new novel . . . Grant's book is as much a love letter to London as a lament, an ode to pink skin after sunny days and lost gloves waving from railings' The Economist

'A compelling portrait of contemporary London, it's a novel fit for shifting, uncertain times' Suzi Feay, Financial Times

'A Stranger City feels like a very important novel for right now: no politically ponderous diatribe but a witty, sunlounger-accessible and deeply humanising story about people - about us - and the societal shipwreck we're stuck in' Evening Standard

When a dead body is found in the Thames, caught in the chains of HMS Belfast, it begins a search for a missing woman and confirms a sense that in London a person can become invisible once outside their community - and that assumes they even have a community. A policeman, a documentary film-maker and an Irish nurse named Chrissie all respond to the death of the unknown woman in their own ways. London is a place of random meetings, shifting relationships - and some, like Chrissie intersect with many. The film-maker and the policeman meanwhile have safe homes with wives - or do they? An immigrant family speaks their own language only privately; they have managed to integrate - or have they? The wonderful Linda Grant weaves a tale around ideas of home; how London can be a place of exile or expulsion, how home can be a physical place or an idea. How all our lives intersect and how coincidence or the randomness of birth place can decide how we live and with whom.©2019 Linda Grant City Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Mystery Political Suspense Thriller & Suspense Urban Fiction England
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Critic reviews

Grant is superb on London life, which is at once atomised and seen as a web of unlikely connections. However, as her by turns humorous and horrifying tale circles and deepens, her deft peeling back of the capital's layers raises increasingly unsettling questions about where all of us might be heading
A Stranger City is a lush love letter to London that asks questions about what cost Brexit will have on [Grant's] adopted city and its diverse inhabitants . . . the history and ideas about what makes a city tick tumble out of her pen, and she draws her characters with a realist's attention to detail
[A] shimmering new novel . . . Grant's book is as much a love letter to London as a lament, an ode to pink skin after sunny days and lost gloves waving from railings
There is a richness in this novel, found in a migrant experience that is deeply embedded rather than distinct from its environment. Everyone has a complex heritage; even comfortable, integrated lives seem precarious . . . the real achievement of A Stranger City is the way in which its narrative is as fractured and uncertain as the London it portrays. And despite its contemporary relevance, the novel avoids becoming a "state of the nation" tract - it's far too emotionally intelligent for that. It's as much a novel of feelings as ideas, and this is what makes it a compelling read
The novel is fleet-footed . . . Londoners of all ages, backgrounds and hues throng the novel . . . The plot's seemingly haphazard quality mirrors the contingency of urban life but the way Grant makes even the minor characters flare into life gives the novel richness and depth. A compelling portrait of contemporary London, it's a novel fit for shifting, uncertain times
There's a Dickensian quality to the opening scene of Grant's seventh novel, yet it's one of the most bitingly contemporary publications of the year - a shifting, polyphonic narrative that seamlessly braids terrorism, climate change, racism, social media and, of course, Brexit
Grant conveys how these sentiments affect her individuals with insightful emotional accuracy
This is a book to whizz through breathlessly. And to laugh at... A Stranger City feels like a very important novel for right now: no politically ponderous diatribe but a witty, sunlounger-accessible and deeply humanising story about people - about us - and the societal shipwreck we're stuck in
[A] stunning novel . . . Grant weaves together lots of intricate strands into a meaningful, poignant tale about the loneliness and randomness of big-city life
One of the great novels about London. Unsparing about what makes it ugly, cold-hearted, fractured; but also a hymn of love, full of characters so generously, so compassionately portrayed. And, of course, it's beautifully written
All stars
Most relevant
A kaleidoscopic style of writing which I grew increasingly unable to follow, and finally abandoned. Although rich in detail, the text was read like a scramble of bullet points.

Disappointing

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A novel that gently tips you onto the edge of surreal then back to reality, like passing from a waking to a dream state and back. It’s peopled with likeable characters that you care about. On the surface you might mistake the book as a police mystery novel but that is only one of its layers. I’ve both read and then listened to this novel as I needed it twice, probably because although it has dystopian flashes, like deportation trains running through the night, I didn’t want to leave the characters.

Absorbing, literary, great, expansive and localised.

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Enjoyed overall but didn't feel a close bond with the characters, not helped but a rather average narrator

Interesting

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Packed w believeable characters with extraordinary stories. Makes me nostalgic for pre-Brexit London. What an amazing city we were.

A great London tale

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The book is as good as you'd expect from Linda Grant. The narration is mostly quite good but there's annoying mispronunciation of words like chutzpah and apropos, which she or the producers could easily have checked - also her affectation of Haitch for H, which doesn't fit her accent.

worth listening to

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