SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMENS PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023
AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Its time to dance, to love, to be free

Mesmerising BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other
Fabulous MAGGIE O'FARRELL, author of Hamnet
Beautiful CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, author of Open Water

Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club on the outskirts of London. Then everything changes. Yamaye meets Moose, who she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.

After their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that leads her to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE AUTHORS CLUB BEST FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE PAUL TORDAY PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE McKITTERICK PRIZE 2024
A SUNDAY TIMES AND GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR

A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Scorching We follow Yamaye through love, loss and peril, as she chases her dreams and connects with her heritage GUARDIAN

Ambitious, atmospheric A novel of passion and anger SUNDAY TIMES

A rich and rhythmic story about love and music iNEWS

Roger Robinsons range is wide: the joys and pains of family life; observations on the threatening edge of violence below the surface energies of Black British territories in London; memories of an older Trinidad and visits that tell him both how he and the country have changed; emblematic poems on the beauty and often bizarre strangeness of the world of animals; quizzical responses to the strange, the heartening, and the appalling in incidents encountered in daily life; reflections on the purposes and costs of making art, as in fine poems on a George Stubbs painting, cocaine and Coltranes Ascension, and questioning thoughts on the ideologies of Toni Morrison and John Milton. The poems express a fierce anger against injustice, but also convey the irrepressible sense that Roger Robinson cannot help but love people for their humour, oddity and generosity of spirit.

'With A Portable Paradise, Roger Robinson shows us that he can be the voice of our communal consciousness, while at the same time always subverting, playing and beguiling with his beautiful verse' Afua Hirsch