With his debut novel, the British playwright Anders Lustgarten proves Orwell’s dictum that “to be funny, indeed, you have got to be serious”. A loud, populous, madcap satire on Britain’s broken refugee system, the novel takes on white extremism, Covid-19, the decline of the Met and the NHS, gentrification, the Home Office, the EU and migration in all its gritty, blood-soaked details. It combines political astuteness with tonal exuberance, morbid humour, situational irony and moral passion. The outcome is an irreverent, tragicomic tour de force as absurd and as urgent as hope.
The novel opens with Somali pals Omar and Abdi Bile crossing to Britain from France via the English Channel. A storm rises. Their boat runs into difficulty. They pray for rescue but instead along come white supremacist cop Freddie Barratt and his impressionable protege, officer Andy Jakubiak. A scuffle ensues when Omar and Abdi Bile try to hop on to their boat. Freddie kills Omar while Andy somehow captures the scene on video.
