Pump Up The Street Cred

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Only the deaf know Hounslow. The west London borough sits uncomfortably beneath the flight paths of nearby Heathrow Airport, where many of the vicinity's largely immigrant Indian and Pakistani residents labor as porters, cleaners and security guards — dreaming of escape, a better life for their children and, for now, triple-glazed windows to block out the noise. Yet Hounslow is about to become famous for another, similarly noisy local feature: a violent, hip-hop-infused, South Asian youth culture that is the subject of perhaps the year's most loudly hyped first novel.

The talk of last fall's Frankfurt Book Fair, the manuscript was sold after fierce bidding to the British publisher Fourth Estate for a reported $675,000 as part of a two-book deal. That doesn't include translation rights in nearly as many countries as you can fly to from Heathrow. The book's timely title, Londonstani, reflects the public concern — heightened by last July's London suicide bombings — over Britain's growing Muslim and South Asian character. The 29-year-old author, Gautam Malkani, is dripping with street cred, having grown up in Hounslow before moving on to a Cambridge degree and a senior job in journalism. The novel is written in an imaginative mix of English, Punjabi, Urdu, profanity, gangsta rap and mobile-phone texting. (As in, "Shudn't b callin us Pakis, innit, u dirrty gora.") Its multiculti flavor has led to Malkani being hailed in the celebrity-hungry British press as the next Monica Ali or Zadie Smith in a line of hot young "ethnic" writers.

Could any first-time novelist live up to those expectations? Well, the more serious gora (white) critics won't b callin im gr8, but Malkani does tell a lively tale. He also captures the soul of a subculture that has spread far beyond his hometown, a movement that, as the author illustrates, has much to do with a second-generation-immigrant compulsion to assert identity. "First we was rudeboys, then we be Indian niggas, then rajamuffins, then raggastanis, Britasians, f___n Indobrits," as Londonstani's conflicted hero, Jas, describes his peer-group's search for a label. "These days we try an use our own word for homeboy an so we just call ourselves desis."

That word basically means countrymen in Hindi, but in Londonstani it seems to embrace any young gangsta wannabe who fancies bling jewelry, designer hooded sweatshirts, Bollywood film divas, high-end mobile phones and senseless violence. A former "coconut" — brown outside, white inside — Jas has given up his studious ways to hang out with a gang of more authentic desis: Hardjit, a well-muscled Sikh who likes to beat up goras and Muslims suspected of fancying Indian girls; sheeplike Ravi, who is overeager to fit in; and angry Amit, tortured by "complicated family-related s___" involving his brother's impending marriage.

The posse cruises London in Ravi's lilac BMW — "spoiler, alloy hubcaps that kept on spinnin at red traffic lights an matchin lilac windscreen wipers" — looking for "fit" women and making pocket money reprogramming stolen cell phones. That scam leads them into partnership with a menacing Indian ex–investment banker, and they're soon in over their heads. At the same time, Jas loses his head over Samira, a gorgeous Hounslow girl with one life-threatening defect: she's Muslim. With her three disapproving brothers, the ex-banker's hired thugs and his own former buddies all gunning for him, Jas soon learns the true meaning of identity.