Edgware Road: Yasmin Cordery Khan

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As the Arabic script sandwich boards and estate agent windows suggest, we are now entering what came to be known as 'Little Beirut'. Arabs have descended on Edgware Road since the end of the 19th century and have long since transformed it into one of central London's most characterful thoroughfares — an infinitely more interesting pavement to pound than nearby Oxford Street or Tottenham Court Road. What a lovely debut! I was immediately hooked by a tale that I find hard to describe (and is probably why I enjoyed it so much). This is best described as a part character, part plot-driven mystery wrapped up in historical fiction. There were lots of topics discussed in this book that did sometimes leave me feel confused and feeling like I’d missed something. However, I did really enjoy the way it was written and I loved that all the characters’ stories were interconnected.

Seconds later, we come to The Green Man. Could this now be the only functioning pub left on Edgware Road?It’s an ambitious book, well-written and thoughtful, and I think it’s pretty much achieved its ambitions. There is certainly more to it than I expected. I look forward to seeing how this is received by proper critics. Bob Mortimer wins 2023 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with The Satsuma Complex Are you worried about your wedding dress post D-day celebration in Edgware Road? If you are, then, the first thing that you need to do is calm down and sign up for wedding dress cleaning services in Edgware Road at Hello Laundry. The wedding dress dry cleaners of our platform will wash your wedding dress and remove all kinds of stains or marks with mild liquid detergent soap to make the bridal gown clean and tidy. Khalid works hard and risks everything to give his daughter Alia the best he possibly can. The bond between father and daughter is a theme prevalent throughout the story. Khalid cuts an endearing figure.

Take a Look at Our Summary of November Highlights, Whether You're Looking for the Latest Releases or Gift Inspiration We are still just about in Touristville at the southern end of Edgware Road, as evidenced by a carousel of royal postcards. But this is pretty much as far as most workaday tourists will venture. It’s 1981, and Khalid has big dreams for his future. He works in the West End, determined to attain the wealth displayed by the clients he encounters in the Playboy casino, determined “ to be the paymaster. Nothing else in the world could give you authority, and respect”. He’s also married to a beautiful woman and has a daughter, Alia. Always the optimist, when London Playboy is shut down, he’s not worried about losing his job. He’ll take a position with the company in the Bahamas. But alongside this optimism, Khalid is a gambler. He makes bad decisions, his relationship breaks down, he’s in serious debt, and so throws himself into an investment opportunity he's certain will solve all his problems, until his body is found washed-up far from home. The second narrative concerns Alia Quraishi twenty years later in 2003, who finds herself compelled to investigate the mysterious death of her father, who she never really knew. Dystopian Fiction Books Everyone Should Read: Explore The Darker Side of Possible Worlds and Alternative Futures

About Yasmin Cordery Khan

Every now and then — partly out of curiosity, partly for shade — we nip off piste, to see what hides directly behind Edgware Road. Just off Sussex Gardens we find the unassuming Heron pub. Unassuming apart from two things: a Queens Guard, permanently Perspexed into his sentry box. And a sign that explains the pub is home to meet-ups for The Handlebar Club — a collective of gentlemen who've been priding themselves on their face furniture since 1947. In search of more shade, we retreat to leafy Paddington Green, which comes with the added bonus of a grass sprinkler. Continuing on, it strikes us how handsome much of the architecture is along here. An art deco gem is now inhabited by a Waitrose. And to think this looks like it was once a grand theatre or cinema. We later discover it was a Woolworths. You might argue it's a classier joint than it ever was before. That’s all interesting, but it was the characters of Khalid and Alia I enjoyed most, and the contrast between their generations and the cultures and how people mix – or not. Firstly, I want to thank the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The 24-hour reception staff are happy to help any time of the day. Start your morning the right way with an Italian coffee and breakfast in our coffee lounge, or stop off for a cake when you need a pit stop throughout the day. The novel, which Khan has described as a love letter to London, pursues two parallel narratives, the first concerning a wonderfully vibrant character Khalid Quraishi, who is a croupier for Hugh Hefner’s Playboy casino in London, while his Pakistan-based parents still think he’s pursuing an engineering degree at Imperial. And now, we reach the end of Edgware Road, as the Regent's Canal slices in at a right angle, and it becomes Maida Vale on the other side.Of course, word count isn’t everything. A shorter book like The Sound Mirror uses similar techniques surrounding multiple perspectives in separate time periods with far greater success.

Yet it starts with a daughter hoping to meet a father who never appears and how we unravel where he went after he left his wife and daughter Alia. Waves of Middle Eastern residents have brought with them great colour to this part of town. Including the many independent fruit stalls and supermarkets, with their unwrapped mounds of chilies, okra and baby aubergine. finds him with a broken marriage and desperate to recapture his dreams. When he is offered the chance of a lifetime to get involved with a business deal involving the creation of a new bank, he is sure that this will be the big break he needs. But appearances can be deceptive and this time the gamble involves some very dodgy business partners. The digitally native, all year round, online literature and books festival, with new content released every week is a free-for-all-users festival.

Pacing is also an issue. The first third of the novel is well paced, but the rest, from the middle section through to the conclusion, feels rushed. Alia’s on-off relationship with her flatmate goes nowhere, and whilst Denby’s perspective is an interesting one, he often reads like an afterthought and never quite earns his place in the story. Khalid loves to gamble, and his faith in winning big tomorrow becomes a metaphor, perhaps for all of us deep down – isn’t sudden wealth one of the tropes of progress that we are all raised to? However, the key difference here is that there are a large number of narrative threads opened by Khan, including Khalid’s involvement with the BCCI, Alia’s relationship with her family in Pakistan, Denby’s troubled home life – just to name a handful. These plot moments, amongst others, do not feel fully explored.