Who They Was
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4.3 • 12 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Named a Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2021 by Entertainment Weekly, Time, and CrimeReads
Named a Best Book of 2021 by Time
An astonishing, visceral autobiographical novel about a young man straddling two cultures: the university where he is studying English Literature and the disregarded world of London gang warfare.
The unforgettable narrator of this compelling, thought-provoking debut goes by two names in his two worlds. At the university he attends, he's Gabriel, a seemingly ordinary, partying student learning about morality at a distance. But in his life outside the classroom, he's Snoopz, a hard living member of London's gangs, well-acquainted with drugs, guns, stabbings, and robbery. Navigating these sides of himself, dealing with loving parents at the same time as treacherous, endangering friends and the looming threat of prison, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is and the life he's chosen for himself.
In a distinct, lyrical urban slang all his own, author Gabriel Krauze brings to vivid life the underworld of his city and the destructive impact of toxic masculinity. Who They Was is a disturbing yet tender and perspective-altering account of the thrill of violence and the trauma it leaves behind. It is the story of inner cities everywhere, and of the lost boys who must find themselves in their tower blocks.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Krauze's autobiographical debut sketches an explosive, episodic image of a young British man's double life as college student and armed robber. At 17, Gabriel Krauze, known to friends as Snoopz, leaves his Polish immigrant parents and twin brother behind to live in the rough public housing of South Kilburn, London, in the early 2000s. He spends his days getting high and mugging people (sometimes "just to break the boredom"), and makes insightful comments in English class (on Romeo and Juliet: "Revenge is the purest instinct whether you like it or not"). The summer before his second year, he is placed on house arrest for assault. Snoopz drifts through the days "bunning cro" (smoking weed) and breaking his house arrest to continue attacking people. A stint in prison for violating his probation does little to change his ways, and the tinges of regret that eventually appear go nowhere. At times the author's swagger makes the reader feel the real-life material hasn't been fully sublimated, but the prose sizzles as Snoopz's frantic narration ("I swear I'm gonna frass out and Mazey says swear down fam?") blends with arresting lyrical flourishes ("I watch dawn's pink fingers claw the sky open"). This tour through a hard-knock life is compulsively readable.
Customer Reviews
Awe Inspiring
A tough read but worth every ounce of mental energy