England Is Mine by Nicolas Padamsee review – battle lines drawn

Two teenage boys come of age in a divided and radicalised London in this politically charged debut

The perilous porousness between& our online and offline worlds is the spark for Nicolas Padamsee’s tinderbox thriller about two teenage boys. Deeply astute and devastating in its commentary on immigrant communities, England Is& Mine joins a new generation of politically charged novels – including Megha Majumdar’s A Burning and Priya Guns’s Your Driver Is Waiting –& in& exposing the power and pitfalls of& online platforms.

Two youths, David and Hassan, whose intertwined tales are told by turns, are students at the same school in east London. David is a strict& vegan and has few friends. He& doesn’t plan on going to university& (“There would be no reading novels& anyway, he thinks. There would only& be criticising novels for their heteronormativity, their whiteness, their Europeanness, their whateverness”). As an Anglo-Iranian, he perpetually feels the burden of the& question “Where are you from?” His parents are divorced. Between caring for his vulnerable father on the& one hand, and bickering with his overbearing but well-meaning mother on the other, he is forced to flit between two houses but rarely feels at home.