As Nicolas Padamsee’s thrilling debut novel England is Mine hurtles towards its climax, its principal character, David, readies himself for an important mission. A teenage victim of bullying, he has been slowly drawn into a world of online extremism. After making a purchase through the dark web, he is determined to become a hero in the underground network in which he is now enmeshed.

In the same borough of East London, David’s one-time tormentor Hassan is about to leave the house. Having drifted away from his pot-smoking childhood friends, Hassan volunteers at his local mosque and is on the brink of signing an Esports contract that will turn his passion for the Fifa video game franchise into a profession. David and Hassan’s lives have each been transformed, but fate seems set to bring the two young men back together.

Padamsee is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s doctoral programme in creative and critical writing as well as being the editor of an online magazine he himself launched to counter extremism through art. England is Mine developed out of his doctoral project, and its academic origins, as well as its obvious socio-political function in keeping with Arts Against Extremism’s mission, can sometimes undermine its narrative. In its attempt to reach as wide a readership as possible, the novel lacks the nuance that might make for a more sophisticated and complex text and a less one-dimensional cast of characters. David’s radicalisation unfolds too rapidly, and at times it feels as though the book might transform into an op-ed warning to the parents of teenage boys about the dangers of the internet and the ‘alt-right’ (a term as undefinable as it is overused).

Nevertheless, Padamsee has produced a darkly humorous and highly topical novel. This owes much to the references to popular culture that punctuate the text: David idolises the fictional Karl Williams, a vegan singer-songwriter clearly inspired by Morrissey, and it is Williams’s polemic about the incompatibility of Islam and western liberalism, and David’s fealty to the musician, that set off the novel’s events. Similarly, references abound to the ‘woke left’, cancel culture and the latest performances and line-ups of West Ham United.

At its core, however, England is Mine is an entirely relatable story about the desire to belong and to be heard. As teenage angst risks transforming into terrorism, it is difficult not to reflect on one’s own awkward adolescence and where a longing for acceptance might lead us.