The Fortune Men

Shortlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize

A heart-wrenching novel based on a true miscarriage of justice from an award-winning author

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, petty criminal. He is many things, but he is not a murderer.

So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. Witnesses allegedly saw him enter a shop that night and love lends him immunity too — the fierce love of his wife, who forgives his gambling in a heartbeat, and his children.

It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of returning home dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a fight for his life — against conspiracy, prejudice and cruelty — and the truth may not be enough to save him.

ISBN: 9780241466957 | Published: 30 August 2022 | Paperback | 384 pages