ONCE told by a publisher, “we’re already publishing an Indian writer this year”, award-winning author Nikesh Shukla often seeks to amplify the voices of those on the margins.
Inspired by his former role as a youth worker running a magazine for young writers in Bristol, Rife: Twenty-One Stories from Britain’s Youth, covers important issues affecting young people in 2019. The book, co-edited with Sammy Jones, is a collection of essays penned by young people and covers topics, from gender and university debt, to the toxicity of social media and knife crime.
Genre-wise, Shukla has, however, always favoured fiction: “I feel most at home with fiction”, he says, “as I’m interested in what makes people do the things they do; fiction gives me space to explore that. My nonfiction is a tool of advocacy”.
The Boxer, published in June 2019 and his second young adult novel, is partly based on a true-life experience, when he overheard a group of drunk men contemplating assaulting him.
Escaping unscathed on that occasion, the episode inspired him to take up boxing and The Boxer tells the story of Sunny, a young man who turns to the sport in the aftermath of a racially motivated attack at a train station.
In 2019, Shukla’s debut in the young adult fiction space Run Riot was nominated for the 2019 CILIP Carnegie Medal. The book is a thriller spanning four different narratives and explores issues of gentrification.
This year also saw the publication of The Good Immigrant USA, an anthology of essays written by first and second-generation immigrants to the US. Co-edited with Chimene Suleyman, the book goes to the very core of what it really means to be an American and indeed, viewed as “other”, in an increasingly divided nation.
Not so much a sequel, the US version, nonetheless, certainly builds on the momentum of its UK counterpart published in 2016. Poignant, heart-breaking, polemic and at times, humorous, the volume sees 21 BAME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic) writers discuss issues of race and immigration in the UK.
Launching Shukla’s career as a full-time writer, editor and publisher (see below), The Good Immigrant sold over 60,000 copies and won the reader's choice at the Books Are My Bag Awards in 2016. Crowdfunded by JK Rowling and others, it also inspired a podcast and TV show, as well as being a Radio 4 Book of the Week.
One of Foreign Policy magazine’s 100 Global Thinkers and The Bookseller’s 100 most influential people in publishing in both 2016 and 2017, last year saw the publication of The One Who Wrote Destiny. Shukla’s third novel, it weaves an inter-generational story of a Bradford-based Gujarati family with Kenyan roots.
The Harrow-born law graduate was a voracious reader growing up and fell in love with the world of books and writing reading the likes of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and Zadie Smith’s White Teeth.
Coconut Unlimited, Shukla’s debut novel, was published by Quartet Books in 2010 and nominated for the Costa First Novel Award and Desmond Elliott Prize. Other notable works include Generation Vexed in 2011, an essay co-written with Kieran Yates and published by Random House about the London Riots, and Meatspace.
In 2013, Shukla’s novella about food, The Time Machine, won Best Novella at the Sabotage Awards.
Outside of book writing, in 2014, he co-wrote an award-winning short film Two Dosas and his comedy, Kabadasses aired on E4 and Channel 4 in 2011.
Shukla has hosted The Subaltern Podcast, a panel discussion involving writers talking about all things writing and co-hosted Meat Up, Hulk Out with sci-fi writer James Smythe. He also had a column in The Observer/Guardian until August.
A firm believer in equality of opportunity for writers of all different backgrounds, Shukla is a co-founder of the Good Literary Agency, which focuses on developing the careers of writers from minority backgrounds.
