Nowhere Books Bingo: A book by a local author
Ivor and his three friends Marco, Arjan and Jonas are a tight-knit gang, their own found family. According to Ivor, school used to be easy, until he and his friends lost interest and started making money and names for themselves on the streets. Ignoring the admonition from parents, teachers, social workers and others, they live hard and fast, not really caring who they have to hurt as long as they have each other. Their way of life isn’t one that leads to happy endings, however, and it’s only a matter of time before tragedy strikes.
This semi-autobiographical novel, written by a 19-year-old on his phone, has been a huge success since its publication in 2023. It’s won several awards, and been nominated for several more. It’s a fast and relatively easy read, despite being written in a vernacular used mainly by the youths in the bigger cities, with a non-standard sentence syntax and vocabulary from a number of languages and cultures (there’s a dictionary of sorts on the end papers of the book, which came in handy more than once, as I’m not as experienced with all the slang terms used here). The author writes in exactly the way a lot of people his age speak, and there is very little punctution or capitalisation in any of his many brief chapters.
Full review here.