Wimmy Road Boyz

by Sufiyaan Salam

three boyz drive & dream
of an impossible night
on an endless street...

a white bimmer hurtles down manchester’s curry mile, carrying three brown boys in pursuit of a wild night out, oi oi oi!

there’s IMMY (22) – nursing mad heartbreak but tryna get over it by chirpsing someone new, hoping to distract from the scores of rage bubbling up beneath...

there’s KHAN (23) – cambridge-gangster on a mission to avenge, losing himself to old stereotypes, illegal ventures on the sly...

and there’s HARIS (23) – the sensitive type, getting married next week but having second thoughts, feeling mad para about his day ones discovering all his secrets.

it’s an evening of chaos and mischief. three boys with nothing to do and something to prove. of course there’s gonna be trouble.

and look, what the boys don’t know: this night might just be their last...

WIMMY ROAD BOYZ is a blistering story of masculinity, violence and love set over the course of a single, surreal night from a wholly original new British talent.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Book Club, India, Audiobook, Literature

384 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 28, 2026

About the author

Sufiyaan Salam is a writer and former animator from Blackburn. He’s working on several TV & feature projects, and co-wrote the short film MAGID / ZAFAR, premiering in 2025. Wimmy Road Boyz, winner of the #Merky Books New Writers’ prize, is his first novel.

Reviews

[Sufiyaan]

OK NGL

I ATE WITH THIS ONE

🚗🚗🚗💨💨💨

[alex]

whewww i am way too fragile for this rn. heartbreakingly beautiful and yet i’m laughing through my tears. so different from anything i’ve ever read

— more collected thoughts

upcoming from @merkybooks - something very, very special

when people talk about how men have it hard and they talk about boys that have been vilified and left behind, they are, of course, often talking about largely privileged white men. the various traumas and pains the characters of Wimmy Road Boyz have experienced could be argued to be universal, yet their specific cultural context — young men of Pakistani descent who grew up in northern England — throws these issues into greater relief

with hyper-intimate perspectives of his three main characters and brief deviations through a wider cast, the author paints a vivid and powerful portrait of what it is to be young and Brown in britain
questions of masculinity, shame, identity, community, power, love, and truth are tackled in a way that never feels heavy handed. each boy is in turmoil, wrestling with an inner darkness he can barely face let alone share, and these rise to the surface throughout the course of one night
naturally, this book goes to some dark places, yet it made me laugh aloud time and time again. the voices are raw and messy (and strikingly real) but the author’s prose is precise. just stunning writing throughout

a magnificent novel, one i hope to see a lot of people talking about, and i hope a lot of teenagers and young people read this

#merkybooks #scottishbookstagrammer #publishing

[Meike]

Booker bait deluxe - and I'm known to respond to that, so let's pick it up! :-)

[Ross]

just phenomenal — and i’m not using that word lightly. unlike anything i’ve ever read, i won’t be surprised if this is on the booker longlist this year

[David]

There are three compelling reasons why this novel might be included on this year’s Booker Prize longlist: the atypical use of language, the way it pushes the boundaries of traditional literary narrative, and its focus on a culture seldom represented truthfully and authentically in Western society. And, for all of these reasons, I would be perfectly content to see it so recognized by this year’s panel of judges. Kudos to Sufiyaan Salam for taking risks and throwing caution to the wind. Such bravado can produce interesting art.

For one reason alone, it may not be in the running for this year’s Booker (and I would be disappointed to see it advance to the shortlist if it is): the quality of the writing. For all its merits, Wimmy Road Boyz does not approach the Foundation’s stated goal of “awarding literary excellence”. Not only is this nowhere near the best novel written in English during the qualification period, it is not the best novel written in edgy jargon.

Most of the interwoven storylines are put forth to the reader through the nearly endless yapping banter of Immy, Khan, and Haris. Even the occasional monologues from more minor characters feel less like skillful stream-of-consciousness than authorial spaghetti thrown against the wall to see what sticks. Pacing is a problem as well. There are protracted longueurs interspersed with sudden leaps forward that seem to leave more interesting and important matters unaddressed. If there was an editor involved, they may have been more focused on meeting publication deadlines, or encouraging the writer to keep producing, than tailoring the submitted text.

But the biggest problems for this reader are the many (many) awkward similes, metaphors, and attempts at creative descriptive phrases that simply miss the mark:

…even the roaring capillaries of the most diabetic uncles have quietened their hiss, this, this, is the climax.

…Hashim’s is another ghost that just won’t leave. so present, so in the way. he grimaces at his own discomfort, shuffling around the perimeters of the spectre like he’s trying to squeeze past a sumo team at a breakfast buffet.

…Ahmed, repping the greens, dives as elegant as a ballerina, catching the ball like covid in a care home.

…the question just ricochets out of his mouth like a gun with the safety off.

Recent novels of a similar ilk that have been of higher quality include An Olive Grove in Ends (Moses McKenzie), In Our Mad and Furious City (Guy Gunaratne), and Who They Was (Gabriel Krauze). At an entirely other level remain the classics Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange. And while Joyce’s Ulysses is the literary equivalent of Jazz Fusion virtuosity, Salam’s debut novel more often approximates the overearnest, tempestuous scree coming from an Emo garage band.

2.5 stars (5 for representation, though)

[Blair]

This, one of the best books I have read all year, is also one of the hardest to review. It’s the most inventive feat of language and narrative creativity I’ve read since Joshua Cohen’s Book of Numbers... which I have always found similarly difficult to talk about/describe. With both books I think this is because the pleasure lies in the author’s use of language, and this is not an easy thing to convey in a review; even pulling out an extract doesn’t necessarily work because it risks sounding contrived in isolation and loses all the context of what it’s like to be truly immersed in the flow. But anyway, as soon as I hit the description of Haris as ‘the leg-quivering brother in the backseat, all the rubescent neon of the curry mile refracting abrasively around his dog-mad eyes, pupils swirling and twirling like a washing machine filled with blood’ (which is on the second page of the book), I knew I was going to absolutely love this.

Salam packs the narrative with dialect and slang and almost everything, except names, is in lowercase; sometimes conversations are laid out like dialogue in a script; it’s fresh and hilarious and every time I came back to it it was just a treat. Under all the swagger and jokes there’s a real emotional core to the tale of Immy, Khan and Haris, and the sheer playfulness of most of the narrative means that when it gets serious, it hits very hard.

It’s not that every single experiment in Wimmy Road Boyz works perfectly – a handful of scenes teeter on the edge of gimmicky, and on the few occasions the narrative strayed into a female character’s perspective, I was never quite as convinced or immersed as I was with the boys. But overall the sheer emotional impact and exuberant energy of this book just cannot be denied. It’s set on one road on one night yet it feels like an epic.

I adored it. Reminded me how exciting fiction can be when a writer is clearly having the absolute time of their life with language. What a debut, I’m so excited to read more from Salam.

[Mark Rizk Farag]

Reading this book at 30 truly is a wild ride. It captures many aspects of the lifestyle, aesthetics, conflicts and trauma that a brown boy like myself experiences in their late teens to early 20s. These include friends dying young, culture shocks at university, nights out, finding out some of your boys are wrong uns, violence outside, struggles with identity, crises of faith etc. I am really, really glad it exists. It also uses UK slang as its vernacular throughout, and is unashamedly representative of northern UK Pakistani working class men/boys. It is a wild ride and truly reminds me of some of the insane nights out some of us experienced when we were younger. It takes place on one particularly insane night out, that changes the liges of all our protagonists.


It also makes very, very wide ranging references from Dizzee Rascal, to the Quran, to Aristotle and Avicenna to the conference of the birds.

 

It is a bizarre book that has manic street preachers, brown cowboys, angry bossmen, vivid prophecies appearing in chapter long streams of piss, musings on the effects of PREVENT on the UK muslim population, considerations of what it would be like to be in a concentration camp with Riz Ahmed and so on. 


It also captures brilliantly, masculinity in global majority circles in the UK, friendship groups, coming of age, culture clashes, grief and trauma.


Highly recommended for those in the UK in particular. A definite trigger warning for SA however.

Edit: one thing I found jarring about this book is that it understandably wants you to connect with the struggles of the Muslim and Brown characters. It does a good job of making you care. On the other hand however, it uncritically presents people of other backgrounds really negatively or with a lack of empathy. For example, Indians are called 'piss drinkers' and some of the characters appear to have to watch vids of ISIS exercutions (of who I wonder?) for fun.

[Sabah Salam]

BURSTING WITH ENERGY!

I laughed, I cried and I paused so many times, in awe of how incredible each sentence is - devouring it, like a 1kg box of the freshest, hottest and stickiest jalebi. What an incredible story of friendship, family, masculinity and vulnerability (and so much more!!!!) And oh, how Sufiyaan captures the vibrancy and chaotic energy of the Curry Mile!

[Rose]

Already mentioned this in a cover letter #grindset. But actually I really didn’t like it. I think the style of language was so affected which I enjoyed at times but mostly felt like it was trying way too hard. Also I’m sorry I just don’t care about men processing like basic basic emotions that’s so uninteresting and old news & there’s nothing in that for me. I don’t care if it’s an accurate depiction it’s dull for any reader with some semblance of emotional intelligence. I also generally don’t think the book was fabulous to women as well despite the few and far between female perspectives and the backdrop of the reclaim the night march. Sure I enjoyed the sense of place but that didn’t save this for me so yah overall a bit rubbish.

[Abdul Noormohamed]

There is a scene towards the end of Wimmy Road Boyz where one of the characters finally says, "I'll tell you everything." It struck me that this simple sentence was really what the novel had been moving towards all along. Not the kidnapping. Not the violence. Not even the heartbreak. The real story is about what happens when men finally find the courage to tell the truth.

This book is ostensibly about three British Pakistani friends driving around Manchester's Curry Mile over the course of a single night before one of them gets married. It has all the ingredients of a familiar coming-of-age story, fast cars, late-night cafés, romance, drugs, bravado and bad decisions. But very quickly it becomes apparent that this is merely the stage on which a far more intimate drama unfolds. Every mile travelled on Wimmy Road is also a journey into memory, identity and the stories we tell ourselves in order to survive.

What I liked most about this book is its interrogation of masculinity. The main characters, Immy, Khan and Haris all begin the night performing versions of manhood they imagine the world expects of them. One hides behind humour and reckless flirtation, another behind the allure of power and criminality, while the third retreats into silence and dutiful obedience. They appear very different, yet they are united by one thing, which is that none of them knows how to speak honestly about pain.

We often speak of toxic masculinity as though it is simply aggression or domination. In this book, Sufiyaan Salam suggests something more nuanced. Toxic masculinity is also emotional illiteracy. It is the inability to grieve openly, to admit fear without shame, to ask for help before anger becomes the only language left. The violence in the novel is real, but what interested me more was the silence that precedes it. Again and again, the men fail one another not because they do not care, but because they have never learned how to care out loud.

This is, ultimately, a novel about friendship. There is something profoundly moving about watching these three men slowly realise that the people they have spent years laughing with are also the people before whom they are most afraid to be vulnerable. Their banter, insults and performances of toughness are not signs of emotional closeness but substitutes for it. The book's emotional climax is therefore not found in acts of heroism or revenge, but in conversations that should have happened years earlier. Healing begins the moment performance ends.

The question of identity runs through every page. Haris's struggle between faith, sexuality, family expectations and artistic expression is perhaps the most obvious, but all three protagonists inhabit multiple identities that resist easy categorisation. They are British without ceasing to be Pakistani; Muslim without being reducible to religion; young men shaped as much by Manchester as by inherited memories of migration and Partition. The book wisely resists offering neat resolutions. Identity here is not something one arrives at but something one continues to negotiate.

I also appreciated the way the novel quietly broadens its moral universe. The "Take Back the Night" march running through the latter part of the book serves as a reminder that the men's emotional journeys exist alongside the realities faced by women navigating violence, fear and public space. Likewise, the revelation about Pakeeza reframes what initially appears to be a conventional story of romantic heartbreak into something far more painful and ethically complex. It asks uncomfortable questions about trauma, helplessness and the limits of love when confronted with violence that cannot be undone.

One of the novel's quieter pleasures is its conversation with Farid ud-Din Attar's The Conference of the Birds. The allusion is never forced, and readers unfamiliar with Attar's poem can enjoy the novel without recognising it. Yet for those who do, the recurring image of the hoopoe becomes a beautiful thread running beneath the narrative. In Attar's poem, the birds search the world for a king, only to discover that the journey has really been towards self-knowledge. Salam's three protagonists undertake a similar pilgrimage. Each begins the night searching for something external, love, power, certainty, acceptance, only to discover that what they have been avoiding is themselves. The destination is not another place but another way of seeing.

I found myself thinking, too, about the significance of setting. Curry Mile is not simply a location but a living archive of migration, memory and belonging. The restaurants, shisha cafés and familiar streets become a geography of the diaspora, where inherited histories meet contemporary Britain in all its contradictions. The book captures this world with affection but without nostalgia, allowing it to remain messy, funny, vibrant and painfully human.

For a debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz is remarkably ambitious. Its shifting perspectives, linguistic inventiveness and non-linear structure demand patience, but they also reflect the fragmented nature of memory itself. The story refuses to move in a straight line because healing rarely does.

In the end, what I admired most was the novel's quiet insistence that redemption begins not with certainty but with confession. We spend much of our lives constructing identities that we hope will protect us from rejection. Salam reminds us that these performances often become prisons of our own making. The courage his characters eventually discover is not the courage to fight, but the courage to be known.

Beneath the book’s energy, humour and cultural specificity lies a profoundly universal truth, that we are all, in one way or another, searching for a place where we can finally tell our story and trust that someone will remain to listen.

[Andrew McLoughlin]

Nah - the hype is strong here.

Positives:
- Vivid
- Nice and contemporary - makes a refreshing change to hear accurate dialogue. As a result it comes across as natural, getting you closer to the characters.
- Often effective in terms of drama, tension and giving the feeling of being wrapped up in a crazy night.
- A solid attempt - kudos to him for breaking through and his next book will undoubtedly bang.

Negatives:
- The insistence on attempting poetic and lyrical language grates. Bit open mic-ish after a while. The literary devices are sometimes obvious and stiff, so much that the fact I kept noticing them on every page, detracting from the story, rather than being an integral part. Alliteration - check. Similes - check etc
- The pacing is all over the place. So slow in places that you'll be praying for it to end or at least speed up. Then superfast in the last 50 pages where the story finally gets active.
- For a similar reason, it could have been 50-80 pages shorter.

[Paul Fulcher]

THE HIGH-CALORIE CHORUS OF THE CURRY MILE continues to roar and swan, roads gone full water. colour as rain mixes with reflections fully phosphorescent to create a car-fume-infusion, beneath which sounds the priggish warbling of a half-dozen cricket fans wobbling still the streets, wailing to no one in particular about some pakistan was robbed. a heavy, heaving feeling in the air, like a djinn or a curse or some other whatever. like Allah himself has turned his back on us, and all of this - the night and the chaos and the cheap-thrill shawarma wrappers floating down the street like ocean wreckage - is nothing but a vision of a fast-descending hell.

and worst thing is, yeah, this is the song playing just before shit really turns dark. the state of the situation before even a pack of mysterious men draped in ballies prowl the outer edges of the mile, ready for the pounce, carrying out a kidnapping most-
well,
we’ll get to that.

Winner of the Merky Books New Writers’ Prize and featured on the Observer’s best debut novelists list, Sufiyaan Salam's Wimmy Road Boyz is a propulsive read and introduces us to a distinctive new voice.

The novel opens by introducing us to the three main protagonists:

THREE BOYZ DRIVE & DREAM of an impossible night
on an endless street.
moving as a massive through mad sticky traffic, destination: where else? manchester, wilmslow road, the curry mile, yo! that shisha-haze mecca of mischief and magic, a jannat-ul-frdous of kebab houses and jalebi bars. oi, oi, oi!

close up, driver's seat, here's IMMY (22) - something of a bad-boy muslim slut who don't never text back, right now sim-simmaring in an ice-white bimmer, eyes off the road and that.

whip pan, front passenger seat, this is KHAN (23) - the mogul mowgli himself, some cambridge-educated paki, suited and gucci-booted; the type to recite Warren Buffett epigrams like they're hadiths.

meanwhile - quick cut to HARIS (23) - the leg-quivering brother in the backseat, all the rubescent neon of the curry mile refracting abrasively around his dog-mad eyes, pupils swirling and twirling like a washing machine filled with blood.

The three met at sixth-form, and although going different paths for tertiary education - Immy to UCLan in Preston, Khan to Cambridge and Haris taking up a (secret) artistic career, they are now re-united in Manchester. Khan is soon to head back south to take up a well-remunerated consulting role, but Immy, reeling from finding his former love has married and then drunken rebound sex with a cousin, summons the three for one last night-out together crushing along Wilmslow Road’s Curry Mile.

The novel is set over the evening and night that follow, a consequential one as the narrative voice foreshadows early on, each of the three nursing a trauma unknown, at least at is fullest extent, to the others and which they gradually unfold to their companions (and to the reader) as the night (and novel) progresses.

As can be seen from the quotes above there is a vibrancy to the distinctive narrative style, but also narrative invention (including nods to Joyce) such as a chorus of three prophetic side characters who come together, in an interlude, to tell of each boy’s fate through lyrics set to the Mancunian anthem Wonderwall.

A brief coda at the novel's end, set 15 years into the future, tells us more of the fate of the characters, or at least those who survive.

Disappointed this didn't make the Booker - and hopefully one for the Goldsmiths Prize, albeit in a very strong year of eligible books.

[aleena]

4.5! A super unique book, never really read anything like it! The author was clearly having so much fun with the language and the slang, and whilst I did get a little confused of whose perspective I was reading in the middle, it definitely picked back up to the end to race to a really heartbreaking conclusion. It’s so interesting to read books with Pakistani characters and feel like I need to read more in this genre

[Tom Parker]

It’s almost impossible to describe this book - a big, chaotic, and at times surreal story of male friendship, told at 100mph. A confident and impressive debut.

[Eva Link]

i really loved this up until the final 3 chapters. it’s frustrating when 2/3 storylines get their due, and the third bows out of what could have been a really fascinating, complex denouement. because of how it ended, some of the earlier asides feel unnecessary & clunky in a way they wouldn’t have had the story been resolved differently. i feel like this just needed to be 50 pages longer. justice for immy.

[Najiyah]

It’s like Virgina Woolf but Mandem

* * *

I have not stopped telling everyone about this absolute gem of a book. Raw, gritty, beautiful honestly. 10/10 no notes

[Nusaibah]

had a british pakistani boy from manchester do a live reading of this to me to really immerse myself

[Caitlin Holloway]

Absolutely unreal. Salam is such a cutting new voice on the writing scene who isn't afraid to play with plot, form and his readers' hearts. All the comeraderie and real-life complexity of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting with a cultural anchor at its core, this book hit me like a freight train. I expect to see this book on the bestseller lists next year.

[Andy Weston]

AND THUS DO THESE MAN WHOOP ON, three boys in a four-seater, lights beaming it down the winding, binding road, blurring past whistling women and winking men, banging out bare bhangra bangers like there's no tomorrow, bruv.

Three British Pakistani lads in their early twenties cruise down Manchester’s infamous Curry Mile about to embark on a night out that will, the reader knows from the outset, somehow end in tears.

Immy is fresh out of a broken relationship, but has convinced himself that meaningless flings will help block out the pain.

Khan, a Cambridge graduate about to start his dream job, is still grieving the death of his brother while aware that a side hustle he has taken on could ruin everything.

Haris is the most sensitive and devout of the three, and just a few days away from marrying the perfect Muslim woman, but doubt creeps in.

The structure of the novel is quite unique; once used to it, it becomes one of the book’s most appealing features. Sufiyaan takes one themes like male friendship, modern day masculinity, violence, and love, but what makes it so enjoyable is its humour.

There is an outstanding scene, spread across Chapters 9 and 10 which takes place in a restaurant with an India Pakistan cricket match (a fictional one as far as I can make out) on the TV in the background.

[róisín]

fun & sad.. great combo..

[Kit Wolverson]

3.75/5 (rounded down to not confuse me)

I loved that it was set on wilmslow road / curry mile and the insight into three Asian men post uni with a complicated intertwined path.

I struggled with the language and some of the flashbacks but enjoyed the short chapters

[Nell]

soooo close to a 5 star!!! Writing & pacing/storytelling of the book was amazing ❤️

[molly davies]

4.5

[Hamza]

4.5 for momentum and representation, -1 for writing style

[Grace Fethers]

A perfect book.

[Cate Murray]

this is absolutely incredible and everyone should read this. Sufiyaan Salam has burst onto the scene with this utterly captivating debut and i am in love with every word.

following the story of three Manchester boys through their last night driving up and down the curry mile, the reader is taken on a whirlwind journey into each boy’s life and all their demons.

the most impactful thing about this book is the style. my colleague told me that Salam had said that he never wanted to write a boring sentence like ‘he sat down’ and that immediately made the writing so much more interesting to read. it was poetically structured at points before spinning off into beautiful prose - never over-flowered or over explained, but perfectly done. i love when a writer forgoes standard English rules - i.e capital letters etc - as it gives the narrative a completely different feel, in this case, making it much more conversational and realistic. he is funny, full of incredible wit and his words overflow with colour and emotion. genuinely some epic writing.

the characters of Immy, Khan and Haris were so individually unique and incredibly developed, each had their own voice and personality in my head, their backstories winding through years and years of life, unsaid but seen in between each line on the page. each story made your heartbreak, with Immy as the ringleader of the three. when i started reading this book, i said to myself ‘these boys are going to make cry, aren’t they?’. i was not wrong.

i laughed out loud, i felt their pain deep in my soul, the beauty of their friendship that speaks to all of us. and man, that ending. what a way to break me.

an absolutely fantastic novel, could not recommend this enough. thank you to the publishers (and my work!) for my proof copy of this moving and exciting book, which comes out 28th of May. don’t miss it!!

[Robyn Dawes]

Writing this review, currently sobbing, haven’t stopped sobbing for the last hour.

I have rated this book 5 stars which I don’t think I have for any book yet, I can only urge people to go and pick this up and have a read.

I’m trying to gather some of my thoughts together lol - so I thought the book was absolute genius I was crying with laughter at points then actually crying then laughing again. I loved the writing, shifting from prose to script to poetry, words literally darting around the page and never knowing what’s next, it made the book feel electric. I couldn’t put it down.

Immy, Khan and Haris, you just want them to be happy and I felt so protective over them and their feelings. In the book you get to submerge into their feelings - vulnerability, anger, love, fear, revenge, all wrapped up in complicated notions of relationships, religion, sexuality and masculinity.

Sufiyaan Salam has made a book so current and exciting and fresh and devastating and I think everyone should give it a read, especially if you are a young guy. Wow, what a debut absolute legend you are Sufiyaan you are right, you ate with this one🔥🔥

Also that last chapter wtf if I think about it I’ll keep crying lol

[Sam Walsh]

Highly recommend. Wimmy road boyz is originally comical, exhilarating and disturbing - making it incredibly fun to read. All while managing to find wholly new ways of hitting you in the gut.

[Aasiya]

Read in a hospital room haze and my neck hurts from being hunched over the screen. So rich and vibrant.

[youreinmystars]

i am so on the fence about this more so on the representation of muslims as a practising muslim myself. it left me frustrated but served as an eye opener. GRAHHGG for once i'd love to see muslims actually believing what they preach bcuz this religion IS beautiful and kind and i'd like it to be taken seriously for once.

floored with the mention of middlesbrough and preston/uclan like i lived there! what! pakistanis are so integral to the UK and i appreciate seeing them on paper. seeing how these boys speak, think and act is so REAL as someone who went to school with boys like these in the north oh my days.