(Un)arranged Marriage - Couverture souple

MANNY WANTS TO BE A FOOTBALLER. OR A POP STAR. OR WRITE A BESTSELLER. HE DOESN'T WANT TO GET MARRIED...

'Harry and Ranjit were waiting for me - waiting to take me to Derby, to a wedding. My wedding. A wedding that I hadn't asked for, that I didn't want. To a girl who I didn't know... If they had bothered to open their eyes, they would have seen me: seventeen, angry, upset but determined - determined to do my own thing, to choose my own path in life...'

Set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, this is a fresh, bitingly perceptive and totally up-to-the-minute look at one young man's fight to free himself from family expectations and to be himself, free to dance to his own tune.

"Any teenager under pressure from his or her parents to conform will enjoy this novel" (Guardian)

"Rai has an unselfconscious style and a dry sense of the ridiculous . . . An appealing subversive edge" (TES)

"Absorbing and engaging . . . A highly readable debut from Bali Rai that teenagers of any culture will identify with" (Observer)

"Energetically and pacily written . . . There is a vitality and freshness about Rai's writing that engages the reader . . . An intriguing debut that promises well for the future" (Books for Keeps)

"Brilliant" (Amanda Craig The Times)