Four weeks today, this will be published. Like, on sale, in bookshops, people can pay to own it, published. I wrote it three years ago, coming out of maybe the lowest low of my life, and didn’t imagine anything would come of it. Now it’ll be published by my legit dream publisher.

Far too easy to say something cynical and cold, far harder to say: I really tried to write something worthy of the time. My time, those who have worked on this with me, and those who may read it. Very grateful to get to do this again. Out July 17th from 4th Estate Books.

Such a sense of lost potential towards the end of this fine piece, when Kasim Ali writes about the ambitions family members once had

Had the honour of writing for The Observer about leaving home, familial obligations, and ambition. Perhaps one of the most surreal moments of my writing career, to see my face and writing alongside that of Jonathan Coe and Sarah Hall.