By Elte Rauch.
Koushik Banerjea, Animal Nightlife (Conduit Books, 2026)
‘We read to know we’re not alone’ is a quote attributed to C. S. Lewis in Richard Attenborough’s film Shadowlands. Yet, seldom do we deliberately seek out books that take us beyond our comfort zone, confronting us with truths and perspectives different from our own.
As a publisher, however, I often actively seek out books I might never have chosen as a reader. As an author, I am not even sure I would be the buyer of my own novels. In the case of Animal Nightlife by Koushik Banerjea, I would have loved to publish it — or, better still, to have written it. It possesses that elusive blend of magic and urgent social controversy that immediately ignites the curiosity that makes a book truly compelling.
It is composed in a mosaic-like structure, consisting of five main parts and corresponding smaller chapters, always introducing a new friend, or dimension. It immediately immerses the reader in a world of magical realism, layered language and music. We meet Ravi, Sean, and Vikram, three childhood friends from South London whose shared history binds them through deep loyalty and strong, albeit typical male-friendship kind of affection. They flock together like birds of a feather, quite literally, because one of the curious secrets they share is that all of them possess wings.
Living as hybrid human-animal beings, they experience a fractured society shaped by class divisions, racism and entrenched prejudice. Here, the novel’s imaginative framework is never merely decorative. It serves as a powerful metaphor that amplifies the very real struggles of the novel’s characters, including those around them, such as Lady Marmalade the dog, Nicolette, Darren, Ray, Luke and many more related to the three friends, or in Banerjea’s words, the ‘apostles of a higher learning’.
The fantasy never distracts from the social commentary; instead, it sharpens it, allowing Banerjea to examine contemporary questions of race, class, heritage, and belonging with remarkable force.
The novel elegantly blurs the boundaries between fiction and reality. Its surreal elements illuminate the immigrant experience of otherness, exposing the uneasy spaces between identities, cultures and languages. Through this imaginative framework, Animal Nightlife explores racism and class tensions while depicting a Britain struggling with its own fractured sense of self.
Unique in both form and ambition, I cannot recall reading anything quite like it for a long time. Yet amidst its otherness, there are moments of reassuring familiarity. Banerjea effortlessly weaves musical references throughout the novel, particularly those resonating with readers of my generation and slightly older. Andy Polaris, frontman of the band Animal Nightlife, contributes a delightful preface, expressing his admiration at seeing the band’s name transformed into the title of this extraordinary novel. Particularly enjoyable is the playlist of songs referenced throughout the book, offering music lovers an additional layer of cultural discovery.
Koushik Banerjea has created an exquisitely rich, witty, and occasionally daunting landscape of language. He draws the reader into an epic, multilayered narrative of friendship, fractured tongues, cultural collisions, music and magic. Animal Nightlife is not a novel for the faint-hearted. It confronts us with uncomfortable truths that we often prefer not to acknowledge, or even to notice. Yet Banerjea insists upon them, and through his masterful use of magical realism and rich language, he delivers a narrative rooted in lived experience and remarkable literary skill.
It is through encounters with the Other, with a capital O, that we truly broaden our minds and horizons. What’s more, it deepens our sense of empathy and affinity. That is the enduring power of literature. It invites us into unfamiliar worlds that may initially fill us with apprehension, only for us to discover that the Other is far more familiar than we first imagined: ‘She remembered reading somewhere that literature was a quarrel with and about the world, and from where she perched, that seemed about right’.
With Koushik Banerjea, in Animal Nightlife, I found unexpected companionship in the Other. We read to know we are not alone, and I did not feel alone for a second while devouring this intelligent and inventive book providing a creative and a satisfying settlement in its final parts.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Elte Rauch is an author, translator, and independent publisher in Britain and the Netherlands. She is the founder of The New Menard Press in London.
