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'Nicole Dennis-Benn is a treasure.' Nikesh Shukla, author of The One Who Wrote Destiny

FROM AN AWARD-WINNING JAMAICAN NOVELIST COMES THIS BEAUTIFULLY LAYERED PORTRAIT OF MOTERHOOD, IMMIGRATION AND SACRIFICE

Patsy yearns to escape the beautiful but impoverished Jamaican town where she was raised for a new life in New York and the chance to start afresh. Above all, she hopes to be reunited with her oldest friend, Cicely, and to rekindle their young love. But spreading her wings will come at a price: she must leave her five-year-old daughter, Tru, behind. And Patsy is soon confronted by the stark reality of life as an undocumented migrant in a hostile city. 

Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms and lilting patois of Jamaica, Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another. Daring, tender and profound, this is the story of one woman's fight to discover her sense of self in a world that tries to define her, and of the lasting threads of love stretching across years and oceans.

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John Hearne was one of the first wave of West Indian writers to achieve international recognition in the 1950s and the first Jamaican author published by Faber and Faber. He was a contemporary of V.S. Naipaul, George Lamming, Roger Mais, Andrew Salkey and Samuel Selvon. Though Hearnes novels are viewed as foundational Caribbean literature, they did not have the same traction as those of his contemporaries and his work is largely out of print. This collection brings together Hearnes short stories in a single volume for the first time and makes his writing available to a new generation of readers.

Hearne felt his duty as a writer was to examine fundamental human truths rather than social politics or a nationalistic agenda, and his short stories are exemplars of this intention. From his first published piece, the fable The Mongoose Who Came to the City, to his unpublished last story Reckonings, this collection of critically acclaimed short stories is essential reading for any serious student of Caribbean literature or any reader seeking a broader understanding of the culture of the region in the early days of independence.

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'DEVASTATING' Marlon James, 'A MODERN CLASSIC' Andrew Sean Greer, 'INCREDIBLE' Lemn Sissay, 'BRILLIANT' Salman Rushdie, 'MAGNIFICIENT' Aminatta Forna, 'EPIC' Mary Morris, 'WONDERFUL' Laila Lalami, 'UNFORGETTABLE' The Times, 'REMARKABLE' New York Times ETHIOPIA. 1935. With the threat of Mussolini's army looming, recently orphaned Hirut struggles to adapt to her new life as a maid. Her new employer, Kidane, an officer in Emperor Haile Selassie's army, rushes to mobilise his strongest men before the Italians invade. Hirut and the other women long to do more than care for the wounded and bury the dead. When Emperor Haile Selassie goes into exile and Ethiopia quickly loses hope, it is Hirut who offers a plan to maintain morale. She helps disguise a gentle peasant as the emperor and soon becomes his guard, inspiring other women to take up arms. But how could she have predicted her own personal war, still to come, as a prisoner of one of Italy's most vicious officers? The Shadow King is a gorgeously crafted and unputdownable exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.

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Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A Fulbright Scholar and professor in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation programme at Queens College, she is the author of The Shadow King and Beneath the Lion's Gaze, named one of the Guardian's Ten Best Contemporary African Books. Her work can be found in the New Yorker, Granta, and the New York Times, among other publications. She lives in New York City. @MaazaMengiste | maazamengiste.com