On Koushik Banerjea’s Animal Nightlife (Conduit Books, 2026)
Angels in London. Its clear that were they to be here
We would miss them. Something to do with our evil,
Worn not with wings, but through pride.
Innocence alters each age, so in Koushik Banerjea’s
Book it progresses, from childish fascination
Through to the later secrets and sins we can’t hide.
Not that these are actual angels of course – as boy
And bird form this story, proving a sky view on London
And life as a whole from a time in which as music
Changed all, so what was sought and thought too
Was challenged. And in this way all who fly become angels,
Whether by day or by dreams, that incline
Stays woven into this book; as original as it is entertaining.
Accessible to the reader who wants a novel to change
Chord or key in a way which informs the inner
And outer harmonic. Which all animals hum. It’s their language.
And this is a thing we hear, feel and see. This novel is
Conversational from the start, as three all too human boys
Scrape the sacred, seeing South London as a template
No doubt for a world, careening off course, as if flight itself
Became failure. Vikram, Ravi and Sean while still grounded
See how each tattered victory’s flag remains furled.
And yet, there is so much poetry too in Banerjea’s style
And syntax. His lines ascend and dip often, as birds for the page
As you read. ‘Verbals visit through a fitful sleep,’ spiders suffer,
And from the first page his perspective is one for whom
The very air itself becomes feed. As those attuned to it hear
Britain’s broken music. From punk to dub and dream
Soundtracks, these young and magical men keep it real.
This is a novel about social change and the active decay
Of the angel; a title that the writer Bernard Kops authored
In a forgotten play with some zeal. Which Banerjea now
Makes his own, within his classic descriptions of London.
The fact that these burgeoning special ones live among us
Means that if Christ has returned it’s piecemeal. As untidy
Bits of God litter streets, as Allah is snagged under archways,
Or Yahweh slumps abandoned as an anti BNP march moves on.
Banerjea’s boys on the rise are the unlucky Jims we give birth to,
And with humanity and with humour, this former DJ, Youth Worker
And Journalist scores their song. Which flows full of faith,
Both secular and sarcastic, and suffused still with spirit,
While ‘the departed and still very much present were in
possession of tails and claws, and sometimes beaks and wings too,’
Who belongs to the idea we have made from too much corrupt
Information? The boys’ relations once healthy die by degrees
Every day, from 1974 all the way upto and after the present.
The ‘the telly-as-life method’ tortures not only the eye but the mind.
For there is treatise here too, as well as treaty as the boys align
To reorder what others break or make of the world, they each find
Their own particular paths through the trees of London’s urban jungle;
Where snakes abound and the monkeys are priests, politicians
And the racist police who patrol the indian and irish concourse
On which this book’s discourse on self has been structured.
It is only by picking up pieces that we can finally make ourselves
Whole. And here are the pieces of speech that we can recognise
From each city next to the poems that wilder forms may well write.
As Koushik Banerjea moves to combine as Berkoff did, Bards for London
As language and tragedy shape them, Vikram, Ravi and Sean scream
For flight. From Vikram’s maths teacher who taunts, to Sean’s
Animalistic ‘canine teeth baring’ this book’s transmutations
Seem to superimpose on the soul. As each character becomes
Caught in the predicament of the present their unleashed
Evolution locates ‘escape to the Kent coast’ and ‘unmuzzled mutts’
Through word coal. As Banerjea fuels his moves from the street
To the ‘rebarbative’, and the ‘limned,’ to the animals who
Observe us proffering unheard comment and unseen prose
For each page. This is a book of tails then and tales, an almanac
Of instruction. A collection, collation and curation too of an age,
Which must and should be condemned as the night-time zoo
Breaks caged borders to reveal the bars built between us
Through which we can neither scale or slip through. And there
Is scope and scale in this book: entire worlds in each chapter;
Each of which comes with a playlist as each chosen song
Sings for you. It is interactive and arch, without any flash,
But with fervour, as a life loved by cats and with feathers
As a protection of sorts makes a myth, for just as Procne
And Philomela both changed to escape their abuses,
So too do our London legends in the poetry of the everyday
And its pith. And this is a kind of Greek odyssey, as well as
Indian, elegiac; an analogy for growth and survival but also
A thesis I think around form. As we too evolve alongside
These heroes and who they love and lose. Bound within them
Sit the gifts from the gods who adorn if not mankind as it is,
Then what it could Banerbe. Place is poem. And as these boys
Battle Britain, birds, cats and canines and every other rising Race
Can’t conform to the standards now set. The day is done.
Night renews us. And the fucked fox and future and spiders,
Of course, oracle. Banerjea’s book is all things. It captures
Hearts, hope and horrors. It honours gods, bread and butter,
And our first shapes found. Miracles. We witness London
As lived; pawed, like a plaything. We gnaw on the bones
Of the broken and scour through salvage and scraps
For the truth. The animals we have caged within and without
Now bear witness. Each silence sings and stings also,
As the horrors we house provide proof. ‘from a lorikeet lover
Of Laurel Aitken, signalling intent with a triple whistle’
To the ‘skittering breakbeats’ and ‘sped up history,’ this
Assumption of ‘manifold forms’ is realism spelt with
A capital M for magic, but also a report on what’s needed,
As filed by K. Banerjea. The book becomes a tome
For our times, as it reaches back across decades; pre-Punk,
To the sixties and to all the reforms felt before. In a world
Where that word has been fouled, I personally call to bird,
Beast and angel to crap on us and thus cover the mistakes
We have made. The wound’s sore. But this book heals
That wound. Or at least attempts resolution. It does not flinch.
It fights, flying, or possibly crawls through the dark in search
Of shadow and shape, as the ones we have leave us lonely.
The animal avatar has more substance that what it represents:
Our split ark. So read this new novel and see how a story saves
And re-orders, not only the self but the saintly; bitten and bruised.
Wings strike sparks.
David Erdos 16/8/26
https://www.conduitbooks.co.uk/books/p/animal-nightlife
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