The strange relationship between Edie, a struggling 23-year-old black artist, and a middle-aged white couple she moves in with is the focus of Luster, the striking debut novel from US writer Raven Leilani – released in the US in 2020, and in the UK in 2021. Described by The New Yorker as "a highly pleasurable interrogation of pleasure," Leilani skewers 21st-Century sexual, racial and office politics with a dry, dark and frequently absurd comic style. "Leilani's prose mesmerises; you go with her, wherever she decides to take you," says the Guardian, while Zadie Smith, Leilani's former tutor at NYU, calls Luster "brutal – and brilliant". (RL)
