Nightcrawling

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022 – THE YOUNGEST EVER BOOKER NOMINEETHE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER‘Mottley attempts to do for Oakland something of what The Wire did for Baltimore' THE TIMES'A soul-searching portrait of survival and hope' OPRAH WINFREYWhen there is no choice, all you have left to do is walk.Kiara Johnson does not know what it is to live as a normal seventeen-year-old. With her mother in a halfway house and an older brother who devotes his time and money to a recording studio, she fends for herself – and for nine-year-old Trevor, whose own mother is prone to disappearing for days at a time. As the landlord of their apartment block threatens to raise their rent, Kiara finds herself walking the streets after dark, determined to survive in a world that refuses to protect her.Then one night Kiara is picked up by two police officers, and the gruesome deal she is offered in exchange for her freedom lands her at the centre of a media storm. If she agrees to testify in a grand jury trial, she could help expose the sickening corruption of a police department. But honesty comes at a price – one that could leave her family vulnerable to their retaliation, and endanger everyone she loves.Nightcrawling is an unforgettable novel about young people navigating the darkest corners of an adult world, told with a humanity that is at once agonising and utterly mesmerising.'UNFORGETTABLE' GUARDIAN'A MAGNIFICENT DEBUT' RUTH OZEKI, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2022READERS CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF NIGHTCRAWLING'Nightcrawling is a lyrical masterpiece' *****'This book ripped my heart out' *****'Unputdownable . . . From the first page I was hooked' *****'This is a heart-achingly necessary book which will carve a hole in your soul and stay with you forever' ***** 'It is rare to read a first novel so perfectly crafted' *****'This is an absolute must-read. Five stars out of five' *****'Completely gripping . . . This is going to be a huge bestseller' *****

Uncompromising yet exhilaratingly charged by Mottley’s deep feeling and stylistic flair, Nineteen-year-old poet Leila Mottley has been hailed as the ‘voice of a generation’, a claim that seems less hyperbolic the more you read of her assured, moving and powerful fiction debut . . . Freighted with sentences of tough lyricism, it feels like an immense achievement, A rare and compelling meditation on the powerless . . . Not only a fearless investigation of justice, guilt and prejudice, but an allegory of the potential power of speech, narrative and fiction itself . . . Nightcrawling marks the dazzling arrival of a young writer with a voice and vision you won’t easily get out of your head, She whips through the plot, packing poetic punch after punch . . . Now that Mottley has found her own voice, America – and readers in the UK – will be watching, Both a searing depiction of sexual exploitation and a gripping account of a struggle for survival… Grimly captivating … Rich and inventive

Leila Mottley is the 2018 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. Her work has been featured in the New York Times and Oprah Daily. She was born and raised in Oakland and continues to live in the Town. Nightcrawling is her first novel.