Guy Gunaratne

Guy Gunaratne is a British-Sri Lankan author and documentary filmmaker born in 1984 in Shepherd's Bush, London. He studied at Middlesex University and has worked for the BBC and Vice News as a documentary filmmaker in conflict zones including Yemen, Libya, and India. In Our Mad and Furious City (2018, Tinder Press) is his debut novel, set across two days on a north London estate as riots flare following the murder of a soldier. Narrated in multiple voices — Selvon (Trinidadian-British), Ardan (Irish-Muslim), and Yusuf (Ugandan-British) — the novel is a kaleidoscopic portrait of multicultural British youth. It won the Jhalak Prize in 2019, the Dylan Thomas Prize, and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Gunaratne's documentary background shapes his fiction's eye for the textures of contemporary urban life. His second novel Mister, Mister (2021) was published by Tinder Press.