'Luster is as close to perfect a book as you'll read this year. With liquid prose and a painter's eye for colour, texture and light, Luster grapples vigorously with what it means to make art in a world pumping out racism-induced cortisol.' - Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times 'Luster is a headlong carousel of a novel. What a marvel.' - Daisy Johnson, author of Everything Under From the first sentence I knew there was word-magic here and that I would read any sentence Leilani cares to write. You'll find it impossible to put down.' - Ling Ma, author of Severance 'A beguiling fever dream of a novel, shot through with wistfulness, humor, and a kind of breathless, furious verve. I couldn't get enough of Raven Leilani's starkly accurate portrayal of the nuances of being a young woman today.' - Candice Carty-Williams, author of Queenie 'Luster is entirely remarkable, and the most delicious novel I've read. It's brutal-and brilliant.' - Zadie Smith, author of Swing Time 'A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. Publisher: Pan Macmillan ISBN: 9781529036008 Number of pages: 240 Weight: 172 g Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 16 mm MEDIA REVIEWS Razor sharp, provocatively page-turning and surprisingly tender, Luster by Raven Leilani is a painfully funny debut about what it means to be young now. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn't already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric's home and family. And then she meets Eric, a white, middle-aged archivist with a suburban family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn't have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair.

No one seems to care that she doesn't really know what she's doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. She's messing up in her dead-end admin job in her all-white office, is sleeping with all the wrong men, and has failed at the only thing that meant anything to her, painting. Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021Įdie is just trying to survive. Winner of the Swansea University International Dylan Thomas Prize 2021

Luster raven leilani