Who They Was

A Novel

Gabriel Krauze

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Year: 2021
• Topic: Literature
• eBook ISBN:
  9781635577679
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

Longlisted for the Booker Prize
Named a Most Anticipated Book of Summer 2021 by Entertainment Weekly, Time, and CrimeReads
Named a Best Book of 2021 by Time
An astonishing, visceral autobiographical novel about a young man straddling two cultures: the university where he is studying English Literature and the disregarded world of London gang warfare.
The unforgettable narrator of this compelling, thought-provoking debut goes by two names in his two worlds. At the university he attends, he's Gabriel, a seemingly ordinary, partying student learning about morality at a distance. But in his life outside the classroom, he's Snoopz, a hard living member of London's gangs, well-acquainted with drugs, guns, stabbings, and robbery. Navigating these sides of himself, dealing with loving parents at the same time as treacherous, endangering friends and the looming threat of prison, he is forced to come to terms with who he really is and the life he's chosen for himself.
In a distinct, lyrical urban slang all his own, author Gabriel Krauze brings to vivid life the underworld of his city and the destructive impact of toxic masculinity. Who They Was is a disturbing yet tender and perspective-altering account of the thrill of violence and the trauma it leaves behind. It is the story of inner cities everywhere, and of the lost boys who must find themselves in their tower blocks.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Chapter One: Don’t Watch Face
• Chapter Two: South Kilburn
• Chapter Three: The Mask
• Chapter Four: Blake Court
• Chapter Five: Ants
• Chapter Six: Nina
• Chapter Seven: At Tameeka’s Yard
• Chapter Eight: First Years
• Chapter Nine: The Wedding
• Chapter Ten: On Tag
• Chapter Eleven: Meeting Gotti
• Chapter Twelve: Diary of an Eater
• Chapter Thirteen: The Seekers After Smooth Things
• Chapter Fourteen: Outlaw Tattoos
• Chapter Fifteen: Rites of Passage
• Chapter Sixteen: Weeping Blood
• Chapter Seventeen: Catching Cats in Ghana
• Chapter Eighteen: Linking Mystery
• Chapter Nineteen: The Prince
• Chapter Twenty: Easter Eggs
• Chapter Twenty-One: Sleeping with Spirits
• Chapter Twenty-Two: Werewolves
• Chapter Twenty-Three: Signs
• Chapter Twenty-Four: Chicken and Chips
• Chapter Twenty-Five: Red Giant
• Chapter Twenty-Six: Behind the Door
• Chapter Twenty-Seven: On the Morality of Murder in Hamlet
• Chapter Twenty-Eight: After Christmas
• Chapter Twenty-Nine: The World’s Most
• Chapter Thirty: Who They Was
• Chapter Thirty-One: Regeneration
• Copyright