A fictionalised account of a real-life miscarriage of justice, this Booker-shortlisted novel opens with the announcement of the death of George VI over the radio in a milk bar in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, where Somali seaman Mahmood Mattan has stopped for coffee. It is 1952: Britain has a new queen, cracks have appeared in the empire and the bar’s patrons, among them Trinidadians, Somalis and Maltese sailors, are wondering which colony will achieve independence next.
The book is narrated by the actor Hugh Quarshie, who skilfully navigates a multicultural cast of characters including shopkeeper Violet, living through the aftershocks of Jewish genocide; her sister Diana; Diana’s young daughter, Grace; Mahmood’s estranged wife, Laura; and assorted police and prison officials. After Violet is brutally murdered in her shop during a robbery, the finger is pointed at Mahmood, a gambler, petty thief and big-hearted father of three who lives in a boarding house for “coloureds” and is known among locals as “the ghost”. His story is based on the case of the 28-year-old of the same name who, after a three-day trial, was found guilty and was among the last men to be hanged in Wales. In 1998, his conviction was quashed.
Drawing on Mohamed’s evocative prose, Quarshie captures the resilience of Mahmood as he attempts to clear his name, placing undue faith in a racist justice system and state that will do anything to preserve the status quo.
The Fortune Men is available from Penguin Audio, 10hr 32min.
Further listening
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Anthony Doerr, 4th Estate, 14hr and 52min
The Pulitzer prize-winner’s latest novel, which ranges from 15th-century Constantinople to a spaceship in a future era, is luminously narrated by Marin Ireland and Simon Jones.
This Much Is True
Miriam Margolyes, John Murray, 15hr 7 min
Brilliant stories abound in this memoir, read by Margolyes herself, which is honest, poignant and wildly indiscreet.