Nikita Lalwani’s multiple award nominated debut novel Gifted has been turned into a drama for BBC Radio 4. The drama serial will broadcast in the mornings next week.

Its cast will include Archie Panjabi, Sadia Ghaffar, Nina Wadia and Sagar Arya.

Gifted is set in Cardiff in the 1980s, a place where maths can get you noticed. Rumi Vasi is the town’s maths prodigy: untangling numbers and Rubik’s cubes protects her from the harsh vagaries of the playground and gives a pattern to her world.

But after years of her father’s determined tutoring, Rumi finds that numbers are beginning to lose their innocence.

India infuses her with a romantic sense of belonging and, as she grows older, and desire becomes a dirty word in the Vasi household, the idea of love is opened up to painful examination.

Gifted was nominated for the Man Booker Prize and Whitbread First Novel Award last year. This year it is in longlist for the Desmond Elliott Prize. It is now out in paperback.

BBC Radio 4
Monday 12th May – Friday 16th May
1045-1100 (repeated 1945-2000)
(From Monday also available online)