London. A city of shards. A city of ghosts. An 'unreal city' partly rebuilt from the rubble of the Blitz. A city where, on Portobello road, a seventy-five-year-old spinster sets eyes on a thirteen-year-old Jamaican boy called Cub, and finds her crumbling world clashing violently with his. A chimeric city where the two struggle to keep their footing; she haunted by the memory of a faceless sweetheart lost in the Second World War, he struggling to make his way out of council houses and dead-end futures. At once realistic and fantastical, The Living Days is a novel that encapsulates Ananda Devi's daring, unflinching talent, an unlikely love story in which the city of London is the most bewitching player, and the most dangerous.