Pigeon English

Follows the life of an 11-year-old Ghanaian boy living in inner city London and his ill-fated mission to find the person who knifed a boy from his school.

Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on a London housing estate. The second best runner in the whole of Year 7, Harri races through his new life in his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him.

With equal fascination for the local gang - the Dell Farm Crew - and the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of inner-city survival.

But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try and keep them safe.

Shortlisted for Desmond Elliott Prize 2011 and Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2011 and Galaxy National Book Awards: Galaxy New Writer of the Year 2011.

NOTE : Originally pub. in 2011 as an adult title. Bloomsbury have now published this edition as a young adult title.

NOTE : Carries a warning: Parental advisory. Explicit content. Contains swearing throughout, incidents of knife crime, gang violence and sexual behaviour.