Luster

'A taut, sharp, funny book about being young now. It's brutaland brilliant.' - Zadie Smith Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Fiction Debut of the Year Longlisted for the Women's Prize For Fiction Edie is just trying to survive. Shes 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. No one seems to care that she doesnt really know what shes doing with her life beyond looking for her next hook-up. 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 doesnt have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair. As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasnt already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Erics home and family. 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. A book of pure fineness, exceptional. Diana Evans, Guardian A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Guardian, New York Times, New Yorker, Boston Globe, Literary Hub, Vanity Fair, Los Angeles Times, Glamour, Time, Good Housekeeping, InStyle, NPR, O Magazine, Buzzfeed, Electric Literature, Town & Country, Wired, New Statesman, Vox, Shelf Awareness, i-D, BookPage and more. One of Barack Obamas Favourite Books of the Year.