Natives

Sep 7

Natives by @akalamusic
Guest reviewed by Jack
📘📘📘📘📘

So first thing’s first - read this book, now! Like, right now! Seriously, get off insta and get reading…

Natives came very highly recommended and lived up to every bit of praise I have heard heaped upon it.

Never have I read a book that so eloquently and accessibly breaks down British society and culture through the examination of the intersection of race, class, and white colonialism. What I loved most is Akala’s ability to turn on a pinhead the narrative forms of memoir, political commentary, and historical account, truly brilliant.

A book that everyone should read anyway but never more so than now when the need to look at our own attitudes and prejudices is utmost. This was not an easy read, especially as a white middle-class man but an essential one nonetheless.

It made me angry, sad but, most of all, motivated to change how these systems operate in our country and help affect positive change. A must-read!

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Linda Malek

I've always had the urge to set up a forum and voice my thoughts after each read, but never had the confidence to do so alone. 18 months ago, I got my fellow book-loving friends involved and formed The Candid Book Club! Aside from having an exponentially growing to-read pile and deteriorating shortsightedness, we've been lucky to have been invited to publisher events and have attended several talks with our favourite authors (Thank you and long may they continue!) To take a break from the pressures of PhD Chemistry, Jess and I exchanged books all the time and in my youth, I was that kid with the first editions of Harry Potter having already read Gulliver’s travels and some Charles Dickens. At work, my desk is a library and luckily for me I sit next to another bookworm Jack who entertains all the photo-taking. I'm suffering from a chronic case of wanderlust (age-related crisis) so books which are set as far away from home as possible tend to float my boat: Middle East, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Asia...you name it. But if it's got anything to do with Egypt then I'm all over it. So you get the drift...I read all the time, everywhere (on the tube mostly), everyday, a book a week, and very quickly I'm onto the next! And then sometimes there is a book that stops me in my tracks, makes me want to swallow the pages whole, and have it next to me at all times, with some sentences staying with me forever: Shantaram by David Gregory Roberts, anything by Khaled Hosseini, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo (absolute gem of a woman), A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara, A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry, The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shuklaand and anything by Naguib Mahfouz.

Natives

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