M. Y. Alam

'Bad arse. Red Laal. If there did exist a Pakistani Don Corleone, then this was him.' M Y Alam's novel is a compelling tale of survival, honour and family values; it is at once a page-turning thriller and homage to his home city of Bradford. In Kilo and Red Laal, Alam has created characters beyond compare in contemporary British fiction.

Bringing together fiction from some of the city's most celebrated writers, The Book of Leeds traces the unique contours that fifty years of social and economic change can impress on a city. These are stories that take place at oblique angles to the larger events in the city's history, or against wider currents that have shaped the social and cultural landscape of today's Leeds: a modern city with both problems and promise.

Khalil Khan was a good boy. A certain future awaited him until gangsters turned his world upside down. They shattered his safe family life with baseball bats but that's just the beginning. They turned innocent and honest Khalil into someone else: Kilo, a much more unforgiving piece of work.

Ammy is a wannabe writer who works in a shop, until one day the police barge in and charge him with the murder of a frail old customer. From interrogation in the cells, to sleazy solicitors, drug dealers, thieves and hoodlums, we look at them all as Ammy tries to work out the gig.