The notion of urban, multicultural communities has long been romanticized. So it’s refreshing to hear from a couple of authors who have written fiction inspired by their own neighbourhoods – council estates in London and Paris – without giving the impression of making the best of a bad thing, or revealing the ‘otherness’ middle class readers might expect.

Both Faiza Guene and Stephen Kelman’s presentation of their work is a celebration of the richness of their communities, where Faiza continues to live and Stephen has moved not far from.

Stephen reads from his novel Pigeon English, the story of a young Ghanaian boy who has recently moved to a London council estate with his family and becomes caught up in the murder of a young person in his neighbourhood. The excerpt he chooses makes skilful use of slang – some made up and some, he later tells us, absorbed while he was writing the book in the council estate which inspired the story.

Faiza’s third novel Bar Balto takes on the voice of no less than eight characters (including an Armenian teenager and a character with Down’s Syndrome). It also makes great use of street language, including French backslang (verlan). Faiza reads in French and translator Sarah Ardizzone (a particularly excellent reader) reads the same passages in English. The voices are distinct and creative, and paint an immediate picture of the individuals and the structure of their family life.

From both writers I get a strong sense of the characters they’ve created through original prose, and inventive use of dialogue and the complex language of their own neighbourhoods. Faiza tells us that she considers her first novel, written when she was still a teenager, to be out of date because of the particular slang used – while translator Sarah asserts that it functions more as a time capsule in this respect.

Both authors tell us they do not see it as the job of a fiction writer to make a political point, but to mirror reality. On a question about the recent riots, Stephen tells us that he hopes a person reading his novel might recognize themselves and their community and feel less underepresented.

Answering a question about leaving their neighbourhoods, Faiza tells us she’s never considered leaving her home. If everyone who becomes successful were to leave, she pointed out, the only people left would be losers. Stephen tells us that he continued to live in his neighbourhood until recently; he’d regard it as churlish to turn his back on the place that made him.