'An outstanding debut' CHERIE JONES, author of How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps her House

'Vivid and authentic' LEONE ROSS, author of This One Sky Day

'Cacophonic, alive and heartbreaking' KIRAN MILLWOOD HARGRAVE, author of The Mercies

As featured on BBC's Cultural Frontline podcast

At eighteen years old, Dinah gave away her baby son to the rich couple she worked for before they left Jamaica. They never returned. She never forgot him.

Eighteen years later, a young man comes from the US to Kingston. From the moment she sees him, Dinah never doubts - this is her son.

What happens next will make everyone question what they know and where they belong.

A powerful story of belonging, identity and inheritance, What a Mother's Love Don't Teach You brings together a blazing chorus of voices to evoke Jamaica's ghetto, dance halls, criminal underworld and corrupt politics, at the beating heart of which is a mother's unshakeable love for her son.

'Delicate but gut-wrenching' JOSIE D'ARBY, broadcaster

'Irresistible' CURDELLA FORBES, author of A Tall History of Sugar

'Arresting' LISA ALLEN-AGOSTINI, author of The Bread the Devil Knead

'Wonderful' JACOB ROSS, author of The Bone Readers

'Exciting' YEWANDE OMOTOSO, author of An Unusual Grief

'Thrilling' CELESTE MOHAMMED, author of Pleasantview

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

Impeccably researched and seductively readabletells the story of Sam Sharpes revolution manqué, and the subsequent abolition of slavery in Jamaica, in a way thats acutely relevant to the racial unrest of our own time. Madison Smartt Bell, author of All Souls Rising

The final uprising of enslaved people in Jamaica started as a peaceful labor strike a few days shy of Christmas in 1831. A harsh crackdown by white militias quickly sparked a full-blown revolt, leaving hundreds of plantation houses in smoking ruins. The rebels lost their daring bid for freedom, but their headline-grabbing defiance triggered a decisive turn against slavery.

Island on Fire is a dramatic day-by-day account of these transformative events. A skillful storyteller, Tom Zoellner uses diaries, letters, and colonial records to tell the intimate story of the men and women who rose up and briefly tasted liberty. He brings to life the rebellions enigmatic leader, the preacher Samuel Sharpe, and shows how his fiery resistance turned the tide of opinion in London and hastened the end of slavery in the British Empire.

Zoellners vigorous, fast-paced account brings to life a varied gallery of participantsThe revolt failed to improve conditions for the enslaved in Jamaica, but it crucially wounded the institution of slavery itself. Fergus M. Bordewich, Wall Street Journal

Its high time that we had a book like the splendid one Tom Zoellner has written: a highly readable but carefully documented account of the greatest of all British slave rebellions, the miseries that led to it, and the momentous changes it wrought. Adam Hochschild, author of Bury the Chains

SHORLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS
LONGLISTED FOR THE ONDAATJE PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE DIVERSE BOOK AWARDS

'Dazzling' Cosmopolitan
'I deeply admire This One Sky Day - and also, not so secretly, bitterly envy it...' MARLON JAMES
'Gorgeous' Financial Times
'Haunting' Independent
'Wonderfully fearless' New Statesman
'Stunning' KEI MILLER

Dawn breaks across the archipelago of Popisho. The world is stirring awake again, each resident with their own list of things to do:

A wedding feast to conjure and cook
An infidelity to investigate
A lost soul to set free

As the sun rises two star-crossed lovers try to find their way back to one another across this single day. When night falls, all have been given a gift, and many are no longer the same.

The sky is pink, and some wonder if it will ever be blue again.

What readers are saying
'Brimming with and life and love and just absolutely gorgeous writing. a one-of-a-kind novel.'

'I couldn't put it down and I will be recommending it to everyone.'

'A story luxuriously and confidently told, which is sumptuous from sentence to sentence. There is both literal and literary magic here.'

'This book is bursting at the seams with beauty! Magic! Love! Imagination! It is a burst of colour and flame.'

'It's hard to explain, but if you love getting lost in a story, this could be one for you.'