Pigeon English

"Pigeon English is a triumph." -- Emma Donoghue, author of Room

Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize and the 2011 Guardian First Book Award

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 an inner-city housing estate in London, England. The second-best runner in his grade, Harri races through his new life in his personalized trainers -- the Adidas stripes drawn on with black marker -- blissfully unaware of the very real threat 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 that surround him: 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 draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own, unwittingly endangering the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.

A deeply funny, moving, and unforgettable story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls.