YOU PEOPLE

Nikita Lalwani's third novel YOU PEOPLE will be published by Penguin UK on 4 June 2020.

The Pizzeria Vesuvio looks like any other Italian restaurant in London - with a few small differences. The chefs who make the pizza fiorentinas are Sri Lankan, and half the kitchen staff are illegal immigrants.At the centre is Tuli, the restaurant's charismatic proprietor and resident Robin Hood, who promises to help anyone in need. Nineteen-year-old Nia, haunted by her troubled past in Wales, is running from her family. Shan, having fled the Sri Lankan civil war, is desperate to find his.
But when Tuli's guidance leads them all into dangerous territory, and the extent of his mysterious operation unravels, each is faced with an impossible moral choice. In a world where the law is against you, how far would you be willing to lie for a chance to live? 

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YOU PEOPLE USA COVERLalwani’s third novel, YOU PEOPLE (Penguin UK, 2020/ McSweeneys USA 2021) has been optioned for television by World productions, creators of ‘In the Line of Duty’ and ‘The Bodyguard’ with Lalwani attached as screenwriter. You can read an extract from the novel here and you can order  YOU PEOPLE here in the UK and here in the USA. You can hear Lalwani talking about the book on Front Row (7:34), BBC Radio 4 and on The Arts Hour (41:17), BBC World Service.  You can see her talking about YOU PEOPLE here and on Sky Arts Book Club.

Praise for YOU PEOPLE :

“This is a moving, authentic, humane novel which raises fundamental questions about what it means to be kind in an unkind world, and it will stay with me for a long time.” ―Guardian (UK)

“”Fiction is not a blueprint, but it can be a gilded mirror, or a four-dimensional map. Living, loving, dying — “You People” is an elegant work of all three.” Seattle Times 

“(R)avishing, insightful prose..(written with) great skill and empathic heart… Nikita Lalwani’s magical novel invites us to ponder generosity and human kindness.” – Bookpage

“A startlingly original, continuously astute, and deeply compassionate novel. You People alerts us, in these dark times, to the possibility of human nobility.” ―Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger

(S)urges with passion, intrigue, and a rigorous eye toward British immigration policy.” —Publishers Weekly “(C)ompact yet powerful… this timely and adept novel deserves wide readership.” —Booklist

“A lively, poetically written and above all compassionate book.” ―Sunday Times

“A female lead who isn’t defined by a romantic story arc? Yes please. Lalwani’s serious, ravishing way of writing about the secret life of Britain is just what we need.” ―Times (UK)

You People is a short, complex novel that shines a light behind the smiles at your local restaurant, and asks tough questions about the nature of goodness in an unfair society.” ―Sunday Telegraph (Book of the Week)

“Intelligent and heart-piercing―an exceptional novel about the Britain we live in, even if we choose not to see it.” ―Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

“An opening onto a vivid world, whole in itself, not like anything else, fascinating, and so beautifully done, with fresh, alive perceptions and reactions, a tenderness towards people.” ―Tessa Hadley, author of Late in the Day

“Timely and hopeful.” ―Cosmopolitan

“Lalwani’s vivid, intensely empathic novel raises profound moral questions while maintaining the momentum and urgency of a thriller.” ―The Lady

“Beautiful and brilliant. The exquisite writing is vivid, poetic and perceptive; the characters alive and compelling. Everything I want from a novel. I loved it.” ―Stephen Merchant, co-creator of The Office

“Lalwani leaves us with a lingering sense of extraordinary lives and events, in an utterly ordinary setting.” ―Financial Times

“Lalwani’s language is rich and sonorous, interwoven with vivid images that convey the depth of her characters’ lives and emotions with arrest- ing clarity.” ―Irish Times

Nikita Lalwani’s novel insists on the morality of people who often seem invisible. This sinuous morality tale unfolds from alternating perspectives… there are worlds within worlds in this metropolis… Ms Lalwani’s prose has a balletic lightness. Economist (UK)

Photographs:

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