Synopsis
'A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. It's brutal – and brilliant.' – Zadie Smith, author of The Fraud
Longlisted for the Women's Prize For Fiction
Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Fiction Debut of the Year
'The most delicious novel I’ve read' – Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie
Edie is just trying to survive. She’s messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office. Is sleeping with all the wrong men. And has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up.
And then she meets Eric, a white middle-aged archivist with a suburban family. Including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage, and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s home and family.
Razor-sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now.
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Time, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, NPR, O Magazine, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, Town & Country, Wired, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf Awareness, i-D, BookPage and more.
One of Barack Obama’s Favourite Books of the Year
Details
Reviews
“A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. It's brutal—and brilliant.”Zadie Smith, author of Swing Time
“Luster is entirely remarkable, and the most delicious novel I’ve read. I couldn’t get enough of Raven Leilani’s starkly accurate portrayal of the nuances of being a young woman today.”Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie
“A darkly funny, hilariously moving debut from a stunning new voice. Raven Leilani crafts a beautiful, bighearted story about intimacy and art that will astound and wound you. I couldn’t put this one down.”Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half
“I was blown away by this debut novel . . . Every sentence is a treat to read, even when it is plumbing the bleakest truths of society and humanity. It is political and emotional, tender and sharp, absurd and relatable, heartbreaking and funny. The writing is packed with sharp observations of the most eccentric human behaviour, all propelled with an addictively page-turning plot. It is exquisite.”Dolly Alderton, author of Ghosts
