Welcome. Good to have you back in the bookcase. I'm Charlie Gibson. I'm Kate Gibson, and we are the

podcast. Thanks the case for all kinds of books, and I love working our tagline into our open.

Our little slogan. It is good to have you with us, though, because we're going to give you a wonderful

book to consider this week. A teacher in the New York public schools has written a novel.

That's a unique background to be a writer because it gives him a rich body of experiences from which he writes.

And it is an integral part of his writing. But it's more than that. His name is S-D-I-K-F-E-O-F-A-N-A. S-I-D-I-K-F-A-N-A.

Sadiq F-O-F-A-N-A. And the book is Stories from the Tenants Downstairs. Kate, we both loved it.

It's a really rich novel. It comes from varying points of view. Every chapter is written from the point of view of a tenant in this government high rise called Beneker Terrace.

And I guess you could look at it from the character's point of view either as a home or in some ways as a prison because a lot of people are trapped in Bannaker Terrace,

but it is slowly being gentrified. So in a way, it could be any building in the U.S.

It could be in Detroit. It could be in Dallas. It could be in L.A. In this case, it's in Harlem,

and it is the only character that appears in every chapter, and it is

very, it's a very vivid place. It's a very vivid atmosphere. I mentioned Sadiq as a teacher.

I wish, after I'd read this book and put it down, I thought, I wish we could make thousands and

thousands of carbon copies of Sadiq,

because every parent and every child would be lucky to have this man as your teacher.

The stories that he tells are rich. And as Katie mentioned, this is a fictional high rise,

but a fictional high rise that is really takes on the nature of a character in the book. And it stands

for buildings that are in every city. But to quote him, he talks about the building having four

elevators, many of which don't work at times, a trash shoot that smells like rotten milk. And when

he writes about it, you can smell it, you can feel it, you can experience it. It's almost visceral. His powers of description are so rich. Yeah, you've either driven by,

as he describes this long-ass gray building. You've either driven by, you've visited it, or you've

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