Summary

Biyi Bandele's striking novel, The Street, is inhabited by eccentric, mesmerizing characters, who, according to the unnamed narrator, are 'people reaching out to one another, searching for love'.This multiracial neighbourhood witnesses Mide the bookseller, moonlighting as a stand-up comedian; Haifa Kampana, infatuated with the cashier at the 7-eleven; and the Heckler, deriding the sandwich-board preachers outside Brixton tube station.Through these characters, Biyi Bandele creates a surreal social milieu in which he positions the restored relationship between the painter, Nehushta, and her father, Ossie Jones, who has awakened from a fifteen-year coma. Bandele's blend of humour, sentimentality and the fantastic is an invigorating literary exploration of diasporic reality in contemporary Britain.