Gunk

A Novel

De: Saba Sams

An electrifying first novel from one of Britain’s most celebrated young writers, the story of two women circling one another—working side-by-side, sleeping with the same man, inching toward friendship—until an unplanned pregnancy reveals the true nature of their connection.

Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works with him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor. In the early hours of the morning, she trudges home to sleep alone. But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar with Jules—Nim, with her shaved head and steady pour, her disarming sweetness and sudden distance—and Jules finds herself jolted awake. When Nim discovers she’s pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.

Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four-hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she's coming back. What could the future—for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby—possibly look like?

Raw, surprising, tender and wise, Gunk is an exhilarating debut novel exploring love and desire, safety and destruction, chaos and control— and family in all its forms.

©2026 Saba Sams (P)2026 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Bold, cheeky and visceral....A very modern novel by a very exciting debut novelist.”
—Vogue (UK)

“In Sams’s fictional worlds, the edges between female friendship and desire are as smudged as lipstick after a long night partying....Sams writes in the disarming voice of a bored teenager with a gift for one-liners and sudden moments of poetry.”
—The Guardian (UK)

“Young motherhood reimagined by an exciting new literary voice....A warm, often funny novel about an unconventional partnership....A joy to read.”
—The Times (UK)

“Masterful, very original and moving....Tackles these big, amorphous things with such easy elegance....A very visceral book: the stickiness of the club the raw animality of birth, the milky yearnings of the baby....I love the way [Sams] describes things.”
—Pandora Sykes, author of How Do We Know We’re Doing it Right

“A literary wunderkind....Acutely observed and tight in focus.”
—Harpers Bazaar (UK)