This is Home

Carlo moves from his Italian hometown to London and begins life anew as a kitchen porter in an underground mice-infested kitchen. His coworker, Keto, a 40-year-old Ghanaian has quit his job many times but always returns, as if magnetised by the pot-wash.

Carlo searches for answers with his older and possibly less wise Lithuanian housemate Marrok, but Marrok is struggling to cope with memories of past tragedy as death is haunting him.

400 miles north Brazilian au-pair Brunilda arrives in Glasgow where everything is wee or grand and she’s a hen. Cultured-shocked by accents, sideways rain and food habits, her heart divided between the comfort of her family in Belo Horizonte and a new life in Scotland, she finds an ally in Kamila, a young Polish illustrator, with whom the line between friendship and love begin to blur.

This is Home is a constantly changing exploration of friendship, belonging and what it means to forge your place in the world far away from home.

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Luca Serra’s debut novel This is Home unearths the hidden corners of city life, where dreams simmer in kitchen sinks and friendships bloom in the cracks of hardship.

A multicultural cast of workers, immigrants, and dreamers in Glasgow and London navigate hard jobs, post-Brexit identity, and the bittersweet search for home.

Four young people, a Brazilian, a Ghanaian, an Italian and Latvian navigate the complexities of identity and belonging in a new country.

Luca Serra is a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award awardee and This Is Home is his first novel.