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

**Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020**

'The great African novel of the twenty-first century' Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater

On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift.

In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy.

So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond.

'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' Salman Rushdie

'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times

'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

Marisel Vera emerges as a major new voice in contemporary fiction with this capacious (The New Yorker) novel set in Puerto Rico on the eve of the Spanish-American War. Up in the mountainous region of Utuado, Vicente Vega and Valentina Sanchez labor to keep their coffee farm from the creditors. When the great San Ciriaco hurricane of 1899 brings devastating upheaval, the young couple is lured along with thousands of other puertorriquenos to the sugar plantations of Hawaii, where they are confronted by the hollowness of Americas promises of prosperity. Depicting the roots of Puerto Rican alienation and exodus, which resonates especially today, The Taste of Sugar is a gorgeous feat of storytelling (Tayari Jones).