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

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

Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku is the second best runner in the whole of Year 7. Harri races through his new life in England in his Adidas trainers - blissfully unaware of the threats 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 home: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of inner-city survival. But when a boy is knifed to death, Harri starts a murder investigation of his own and endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.

A story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a superb portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape who he becomes.

Stephen Kelman was born in Luton in 1976. After finishing his degree he worked variously as a warehouse operative, a careworker, and in marketing and local government administration. He decided to pursue his writing seriously in 2005, and has completed several feature screenplays since then. Pigeon English is his first novel; he is currently working on his second. He lives in Bedfordshire, England.

Stephen Kelman's profile page

• Long-listed, IMPAC Dublin Literary Award
• Short-listed, Man Booker Prize for Fiction
• Commended, Toronto Star Reviewers' Top 100 Books
• Short-listed, Desmond Elliott Prize
• Short-listed, Guardian First Book Award

Stephen Kelman’s [first novel] has a powerful story, a pacy plot and engaging characters. It paints a vivid portrait with honesty, sympathy and wit, of a much neglected milieu, and it addresses urgent social questions. It is horrifying, tender and funny. [. . .] Pigeon English will be read by millions.

Telegraph

. . . exceptional . . . Opoku’s plight is both heart-warming and heartbreaking.

The List

. . . chilling and charming . . . [Pigeon English is] a coming-of-age tale that feels achingly accurate.

Globe and Mail

Harrison Opoku, the 11-year-old Ghanaian boy who is the narrator of this very fine coming-of-age novel, may well be about to take his place among other well-loved children in literature. [. . .] To be moved to care this deeply for a fictional character is a rare experience.

Winnipeg Free Press

Most novels aren’t as imaginative, gut-wrenching and powerful as Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman, and this one is Kelman’s first. It’s immediately engaging, and it doesn’t let go. [. . .] Pigeon English is an amazing novel. It’s a window on a world many of us will never experience (thankfully), and it is beautifully and intelligently written.

Edmonton Journal

[Stephen Kelman] took a real-life knife murder of an immigrant boy a decade ago as his starting point, but the youth he created is distinctly and wonderfully his own.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Told with humour, despite the gritty subject matter and setting...Pigeon English charms its way into some hard places...

Financial Times

... a topical novel with a great narrative voice ... the ending will crush you.

Uptown Winnipeg

Kelman has created an endearing character at once foreign yet familiar . . . Pigeon English is a mesmerizing tale of naïveté and discovery that has us rooting on the sidelines, hoping that Harri will triumph.

Rover Arts

A violent and riveting coming of age story, Stephen Kelman's debut novel also contains well-timed moments of comedy, affecting family drama, and just enough hopefulness to dilute the setting's biting flavour of despair.

Vancouver Sun

Few writers nail a voice as well as Stephen Kelman does ...

Geez Magazine

. . . riveting . . .

Christian Science Monitor

. . . engaging . . . Kelman's dead-on evocation of the horrors and freedoms of an inner-city childhood deserves attention.

Telegraph

. . . something of a phenomenon . . .

Buffalo News

Filled with energy, humour and compassion, Pigeon English is a gut-wrenchingly sad novel that makes you laugh out loud.

Guardian

Pigeon English convincingly evokes life on the edge as lived by many British children today; the humour, the resilience, the sheer ebullience of its narrator -- a hero for our times -- should ensure the book becomes, deservedly, a classic.

Daily Mail

. . . an authentic and audacious first novel . . . It will be a while before the buzz about [Kelman] dies down.

Scotsman

Kelman blends Ghanaian slang such as "Asweh" ("I swear") and "hutious" ("frightening") with familiar London-ese to fresher and funnier effect. [. . .] Pigeon English does an admirable job of revealing the frightened teenage boys behind gang members' tough facades.

Guardian

Kelman has crafted a book that soars.

Chronicle Herald

. . . a tour de force . . . Funny and poignant, Pigeon English is fired with an uncontainable spirit, a rare distillate of boyhood optimism and adult wisdom.

Maclean's

. . . a very impressive debut . . .

Toronto Star