Filthy ‘Tourism’

Posted on by

Here’s the cover of Tourism, the Southall-centric novel by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal due out May 30 (thanks, Ennis and Pablo):

Bhupinder ‘Puppy’ Singh Johal – handsome, rakish and spiritually disenfranchised – has left behind the immigrant neighbourhood of Southall to mix with the elite of metropolitan London society. When sloaney rich girl Sophie falls for him, he grabs the chance to escape his past and pursue the woman of his dreams, the voluptuous sophisticate Sarupa, who happens to be engaged to Sophie’s cousin… Set in the long hot summer of 2002, Tourism is a filthy, unflinching and politically incorrect take on modern Britain. [Link]

Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal is thirty-one years old. A freelance journalist, he writes for the Times, the Guardian and the Evening Standard… He studied English and American literature at Nottingham University before starting a career in broadcasting with the BBC… Tourism is his first novel. [Link]

Sounds like lad lit, if such a thing existed in any great numbers. ‘Puppy,’ really? He might as well have named him ‘Bittu’ or ‘Twinkle’

Here’s Londonstani by Gautam Malkani, due on June 22. The cover reminds me of M.I.A.’s stencil tigerstyle:

Here’s the UK blurb:
Set close to the Heathrow feed roads of Hounslow, Malkani shows us the lives of a gang of four young men: Hardjit the ring leader, a Sikh, violent, determined his caste stay pure; Ravi, determinedly tactless, a sheep following the herd; Amit, whose brother Arun is struggling to win the approval of his mother for the Hindu girl he has chosen to marry; and Jas, who tells us of his journey with these three, desperate to win their approval, desperate too for Samira, a Muslim girl, which in this story can only have bad consequences. Together they cruise the streets in Amit’s enhanced Beemer, making a little money changing the electronic fingerprints on stolen mobile phones, a scam that leads them into more dangerous waters.

<

p>Funny, crude, disturbing, written in the vibrant language of its protagonists – a mix of slang, Bollywood, texting, Hindu and bastardised gangsta rap – Londonstani is about many things: tribalism, aggressive masculinity, integration, cross-cultural chirpsing techniques, the urban scene seeping into the mainstream, bling bling economics, ‘complicated family-related shit.’ It is one of the most surprising British novels of recent years. [Link]

And here’s the U.S. version, exploiting fear of terrorism:

Gautam Malkani’s extraordinary comic novel portrays the lives of young Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu men in the ethnically charged enclave of one of the biggest western cities, London. A world usually-but wrongly-portrayed as the breeding ground for Islamic militants is, in actuality, a world of money (sometimes), flash cars (usually), cell phones (all the time), rap music and MTV, as well as rivalries and feuds, and the small-time crooks who exploit them…

Gautam Malkani was born in West London in 1976. He was educated at Cambridge University and was appointed director of the Financial Times’s Creative Business section in 2005. He completed Londonstani shortly after the bombings in London last July. [Link]

40 thoughts on “Filthy ‘Tourism’”

  4. manish, you’re the king of close reading. and nice picture nip snip to avoid offending the sensitive. literate and courteous — no wonder you’re so popular among the ladies.

    weren’t we talking about “buddha of suburbia” on another thread? this “tourism” seems to have some thematic resemblance, only set 25 years later. the u.s. blurb for londonstani is manipulation of the worst sort. but i look forward to checking out both books.

    peace

  5. You can read the first chapter of Londonstani here.

    Here is a tough talking essay by Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. He seems to be quite angry about something.

    The woolly sentimentalism of LondonÂ’s literati made them laud a writer as unremarkable as Zadie Smith to the skies; the same thinking must be why the BBC repeatedly commissions The Kumars at No 42. I cringe whenever I watch that junk, hoping the public doesnÂ’t think that all Asians are as naff and unfunny as they are

    .

    IÂ’ve written a novel myself; when it is published next year, I want it to cut the real mustard, not the sentimental treacle of the establishment. I donÂ’t want the marginal recognition that might come with winning the Decibel; I want to go toe-to-toe with Whitey. I want to compete with Amis, McEwan and all the other big shots. And I donÂ’t want a helping hand from anyone.

    Nirpal, you better be a good writer, after all this big man talk, or we will just make fun of you! Zadie Smith may not be a genius but she is certainly not unremarkable.

  7. Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal is married to the journalist and ‘Bridget jones Diary Style’ columnist for the Daily Mail newspaper Liz Jones who recently published a book about their love affair.

    Gautam Malkani is a Cambridge graduate who is an editor at the Financial Times.

    Ghetto thugs.

  8. siddhartha m

    Yes that is what I thought when I read that short essay by Nirpal. I said, ‘Come on Nirpal, keep huffing and puffing and you will blow that house down!’ ;-D

  9. When I first saw this cover, I thought the arm with the hairy forarms and kara was hers, not that of the guy presumed to be behind her. I thought he was making a point about Punjabi women!

  11. Be sure to click the “liz jones” link.

    Holy canoli. ‘Head case’ is not the word. Nirpal, if you’re reading this, we wish you every success with your book and your marriage.

  12. My goodness – those American readers who are being sold the Londonstani novel on the basis of it giving an insight into the kind of ghettos that breed Islamic extremism will get a shock when they realise it’s mostly about the lives of a bunch of Sikh and Hindu kids! Do you think they’ll know the difference? I doubt they’ll really care.

  13. Going back to this issue of whether Nirpal should be mouthing off, I think he’s on to something. It’s easy to say he’s got a chip on his shoulder but, goddamnit, whitey did put a chip on his shoulder. Been putting that chip there for years.

    There’s no way Nirpal should be satisfied with some literary ghetto. He should aim as high as possible and hope to God that his talent can back up his mouth.

    Nothing wrong with being young and brash. His tone is naive, granted. And it was, admittedly, silly of him to call Zadie Smith “unremarkable”- she is certainly remarkable, which is why he made a remark in the first place. But the fact remains that Zadie is clever, multiracial and (I say this advisedly) HOT. These are three very distracting facts, and whatever virtues her literary work might have (they are considerable, but I’m not a fan- can’t stand hysterical realism), there’s no way she’s as good as some people seem to need to believe. And Zadie, bless her, would be the first to admit that.

    But I’ve read Zadie’s essays and interviews, and I believe she will someday be one of the finest novelists in the world.

  14. Yes – when you read Nirpal’s essay you kind of get the impression of him declaring himself as the new James Joyce crossed with a blaxpoitation hero from a 1970’s film [I want to go toe-to-toe with Whitey] and my favourite line of his about how he hates the ‘sentimental treacle of the establishment’.

    And then you read that story about his high-powered famous journalist wife who writes columns in the biggest selling newspapers in Britain (and who is ‘Whitey’) and a member of the journalistic and media establishment, placing him close to the publishing establishment, who has written a chick-lit memoir about him, and you just want to pat him on the head and say ‘Alright Nirpal, calm down, calm down, let your writing do the speaking for itself, you outlaw-rebel you.’

    Anybody taken a look at the first chapter of Londonstani?

    Any thoughts?

  16. Teju

    I agree with you about Zadie. I think she is very talented. She is also a brilliant critic.

    But I do think there is a flaw in Nirpal’s reasoning. He has laudable aims and desires – to not be ghettoised, to be accepted and read by the mainstream, to be considered alongside all novelists of his generation, not as something of marginal interest.

    But then he rails against Zadie Smith, a writer who has taken the stories of Black and Desi British people into the mainstream of British literature, a writer who is the pre-eminent example of this very impulse to write universally and without regard for audience from inside multi-cultural England, assuming everyone is her audience. So why beat up on Zadie?

    Seems like chest thumping to me, an attempt to clear a space and make himself out to be the big bad man from the street come to clear up the mess, beat up whitey, and show these phoney amateurs and sentimental establishment lackeys who is the baddest bad man in the town of London literature….yeah Nirpal, you are the baddest bad man, married to Liz Jones and dissing Zadie who has already been there, done that, and proved that British literature belongs to all the second and third generation black and brown folk that want to claim a place in it.

  19. Turbanhead :

    No one concerned about the relatively hairy armpit?

    Damn you! I laughed-out-loud, literally, and got a concerned look from my PI. 😉

    Kumar

  23. What’s so wrong with Liz Jones based on what’s in the linked piece????

    Sounds like she really loves the guy yet he’s leading her all over the place in a kind of on again-off again dance.

    Yes, it may have been wrong to not tell him her exact age right from the start, but is the person he met and fell in love with (if he did love her) so different now that he knows what date is written on her birth certificate? His excuse of “I’m still changing and you’re not” sounds paper thin flimsy, plus all the to-and-fro over having a kid.

    Sounds more like excuses to head for the door.

    If she was the same age as him and they were both “changing” (like what, that stops at a certain age??? what nonsense! that depends on the individual; you can’t make a blanket assumption), wouldn’t that, in theory add possibly even more conflict to the relationship. I’m sure his family and friends give him a hard time about the age difference and what a big problem they think it is… It’s certainly beyond the pale as far as what’s typically accepted in Indian marriages, no?

  24. What’s so wrong with Liz Jones based on what’s in the linked piece????

    she sounds like she’s got just as many excuses as he does. she sounds an odd bird, and if you have to be dishonest about your gae in your marriage, chances are that won’t b the only thing. not a way to start a mature reltionship. she also sounds like she’s trying to pull oh, me oh my, victim syndrome. they seem like neither was right for each other, and needed some maturing to do, and not just on his end.

  25. It is not so much wrong with him being married to Liz Jones as him play-acting the rebel against the ‘sentimental establishment’ when he is in fact married to and part of the whole media/journalism/publishing establishment – it is all posturing.

  27. Thanks for the link to the first chapter of the book, Manish…..

    Funny how Malkani has lifted that whole ‘who ya callin’ colored?’ joke, sepia-ed it, and stuck it right in the first page. Dunno how it got by the editors.

  28. Every 10 years someone comes along and is acclaimed as the first Brown literary figure to break into the mainstream. Heaven sake’s, Salman is still writing, and VS Naipaul isn’t even dead yet.

  30. Every 10 years someone comes along and is acclaimed as the first Brown literary figure to break into the mainstream. Heaven sake’s, Salman is still writing, and VS Naipaul isn’t even dead yet.

    The only thing mainstream about Rushdie’s writing is that it’s in English. Just look at the settings, characters, references e.t.c in his novels.

  31. Just look at the settings, characters, references e.t.c in his novels.

    That’s silly. Hollywood currently has a movie out about a 25-foot-tall gorilla.

  32. That’s silly. Hollywood currently has a movie out about a 25-foot-tall gorilla.

    ‘Being silly’ and a ‘movie about a 25-foot-tall gorilla’ can both be characterized as very mainstream!

  33. If salman and naipaul don’t count as mainstream because they write about desi characters, how are Londonistan/Tourism going be any different? They’re both about incredibly specific social groups within British-Asian culture.

    And anyway why does it matter? To break out of a literary ghetto to me means that your readership you is socially wide, not the subject matter of your work. How many 11 year wizards at boarding school read JK Rowling anyway?

  34. the funny thing is, i don’t know is Zadie Smith is even in a literary ghetto. isn’t her writing what’s going on right now? at least white teeth was. i haven’t read ian mcewen (sp?) and i don’t know if i will. but i did read White Teeth, and so did a lot of other people. I wonder if Nirpal is thinking the literary canon is still static. to my mind Zadie Smith is part of the canon

    that said I’m looking forward to both books. i think in that qoute he was shooting his mouth off a little for attention, to serve notice. looks like he has a lot of ambition. i think he does have a point though, no one wants to write a “curry book” do they? especially if they have the goods to make it in the wider world

  37. I just finished reading ‘Londonstani’ last night. I give it 2 thumbs up. I don’t know if the pseudo literati will appreciate the ghetto speak, but the ending of the book reminded me of the movie 6th sense.

    No, the narrator isn’t a ghost!