Hot Stew

a riotous novel about sex and money in Soho, from the Booker-shortlisted author of Elmet

By: Fiona Mozley

Narrated by: Nneka Okoye

'Did you know in Tudor times all the brothels were south of the river in Southwark and it was only much later that they moved up this way to Soho. Stews, they were called then.'

Pungent, steamy, insatiable Soho; the only part of London that truly never sleeps. Tourists dawdling, chancers skulking, addicts shuffling, sex workers strutting, punters prowling, businessmen striding, the homeless and the lost. Down Wardour Street, ducking onto Dean Street, sweeping into L'Escargot, darting down quiet back alleyways, skirting dumpsters and drunks, emerging on to raucous main roads, fizzing with energy and riotous with life.

On a corner, sits a large townhouse, the same as all its neighbours. But this building hosts a teeming throng of rich and poor, full from the basement right up to the roof terrace. Precious and Tabitha call the top floors their home but it's under threat; its billionaire-owner Agatha wants to kick the women out to build expensive restaurants and luxury flats. Men like Robert, who visit the brothel, will have to go elsewhere. Those like Cheryl, who sleep in the basement, will have to find somewhere else to hide after dark. But the women won't go quietly. Soho is their turf and they are ready for a fight.

(P) 2021 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd©2021 Fiona Mozley

Critic reviews

Ambitious, clever, brilliant and very funny . . . If Elmet announced the arrival of a bright new voice in British literature, Hot Stew confirms Mozley as a writer of extraordinary empathic gifts

A dazzling Dickensian tale

A complex mosaic of urban life

A rollicking tale

There's no evidence of difficult second-novel syndrome here . . . a pure nostalgia trip

A gripping novel bursting with life. The second novel by the Booker-shortlisted novelist is a real treat

Ambitious, scathing and damn good fun

A sprawling novel of London life packed with picaresque characters

Where the mystical, elemental qualities of Elmet earned it comparisons with Lawrence and Hardy, her second novel is a sprawling urban comedy more likely to recall Ben Jonson or Dickens

Mozley's prose is precise, controlled, unshowy, deceptively readable

Despite so many characters, the novel doesn't flail, it succeeds as a force . . . to direct so many through a labyrinthine story in just over 300 pages is a kind of mastery

A lively, pacy read that gives more than a nod to Dickens and is all the better for it

A lively, pacy read

Mozley's Soho is a village populated by a cast of characters as vivid and memorable as any imagined by Dickens

Hot Stew reads like a great night out in a city that never sleeps

Her new stew is such a steaming, fuming mix of life, lust and London that in the end you feel like you've eaten all of Soho

Affecting and bitterly comic prose . . . [and a ] rollicking, heady vivacity