Yardie is a work.
Yardie was the first novel by Jamaican-born British writer Victor Headley , published in London in 1992 by Dotun Adebayo 's X Press . As described by Goodreads : `` Yardie is , quite simply , a literary sensation in England . The novel borrows its title from yardie , a term stemming from the slang name originally given to occupants of `` government yards '' -- social housing projects with very basic amenities , and is based on the fictional story a young Jamaican 's rise from the streets of London to the top of the drug-dealing underworld , .