East London

Whatever happened to the likely lads and lasses of the East London art scene at the high noon of Cool Britannia? Hari Kunzru’s seventh novel, Blue Ruin, loads much else on to its ideas-rich plate – not least a pandemic yarn set in the panic-stricken spring of 2020. At its core, however, his plot traces contrasting afterlives from the Sensation generation. It reconnects three survivors – two male artists and the woman both loved – from a time when making conceptual art could feel like ‘a kind of social repair’, even a ‘utopian laboratory’. In his earlier career, Kunzru himself seemed to belong in a gilded group of younger British

As Nicolas Padamsee’s thrilling debut novel England is Mine hurtles towards its climax, its principal character, David, readies himself for an important mission. A teenage victim of bullying, he has been slowly drawn into a world of online extremism. After making a purchase through the dark web, he is determined to become a hero in the underground network in which he is now enmeshed. In the same borough of East London, David’s one-time tormentor Hassan is about to leave the house. Having drifted away from his pot-smoking childhood friends, Hassan volunteers at his local mosque and is on the brink of signing an Esports contract that will turn his passion