After winning the #Merky’s New Writers Prize in 2024 with Wimmy Road Boyz and the Best British Short Film Award for Magid / Zafar (co-written with Luís Hindman), Sufiyaan Salam is now been chosen as one of The Observer’s Best Debut Novelists of 2026!
In his interview with the Observer he talks about Wimmy Road Boyz, and how winning the #Merky prize – and going out for dinner with Stormzy – gave him the confidence to keep writing the book. “The idea was sparked by a night out with friends in Manchester during a period of “madness” in his personal life in early 2022 – a combination of heartbreak and getting kicked out of his flat” writes The Observer. Sufiyaan continues talking about his dinner with Stormzy, the imprint founder, and how that night pushed him to be as audacious as possible as a writer, ““I wanted every sentence to be big and energetic and interesting. As a writer, I’m not interested in writing a sentence like, ‘He sat down.’ I want to come up with new ways of describing someone sitting down.” Sufiyaan in his interview admits that he would have never thought that he could become a writer, but now, as The Observer writes “his raucous, wildly inventive prose is bound for a much bigger audience.”
WIMMY ROAD BOYZ is a blistering story of masculinity, violence and love set over the course of a single, surreal night from a wholly original new British talent.
Congratulations Sufiyaan!!
