Koushik Banerjea

​

From market stall to lecture hall, Koushik Banerjea has been telling tall tales, and some shorter ones too, for as long as he can remember. In the past he has used them to peddle jewellery, vintage Americana and abstract theory. More recently they have taken the form of short stories, which have appeared in Minor Literatures, Writers Resist and Verbal, where he has become a scribal recidivist.

 

Growing up in South London, the other hardy perennial was music, so perhaps it was no surprise when he wound up deejaying as one half of The Shirley Crabtree Experience during a decade (from the mid-1990s) which revelled in imposture. He was lucky enough to walk away from the Hatfield train crash and resume with the storytelling, in between an extended stint as a youth worker. Kids are still making mischief (just what they do), but the tale itself became a debut novel, Another Kind Of Concrete, published in 2020. Category Unknown is his second novel.