Jhalak Prize, Longlist: 2021
A great longlist for the Jhalak Prize this year, with a good mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction titles. We’re particularly excited to see ‘Are We Home Yet? by Katy Massey’ on the list, who joined us for a live zoom event back in November.
First awarded in March 2017, the Jhalak Prize seeks to celebrate books by British/British resident BAME writers.
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re: desire by Afshan D'souza-Lodhi
Paperback RRP £9.99
Afshan D'souza-Lodhi's debut poetry collection 're: desire' explores the yearning to love, be loved and belong from a desi (South Asian) perspective. Her work sits on the intersections of flash fiction, poetry and script, echoing the hybridity of the worlds that many young British desis find themselves occupying. Drawing on the poetry of many different languages and cultures - Urdu, English, Konkani, Islamic and Christian - this collection explores how we access our traditions from a distance.
Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho
Paperback RRP £9.99
Publication date: 18th March
When Catherine left London for the US with her husband James, to introduce her family to their newborn son, she could not have envisaged how that trip would end. Catherine would find herself in an involuntary psych ward in New Jersey, separated from her husband and child, unable to understand who she was, and how she had got there.
A powerful exploration of psychosis and motherhood, at once intensely personal, yet holding within it a universal experience - of how we love, live and understand ourselves in relation to each other.
Antiemetic for Homesickness by Romalyn Ante
Paperback RRP £10
The poems in Romalyn Ante's luminous debut build a bridge between two worlds: journeying from the country ' na nagluwal sa 'yo ' - that gave birth to you - to a new life in the United Kingdom.
Steeped in the richness of Filipino folklore, and studded with Tagalog, these poems speak of the ache of assimilation and the complexities of belonging, telling the stories of generations of migrants who find exile through employment - through the voices of the mothers who leave and the children who are left behind.
With dazzling formal dexterity and emotional resonance, this expansive debut offers a unique perspective on family, colonialism, homeland and heritage: from the countries we carry with us, to the places we call home.
Poor by Caleb Femi
Paperback RRP £9.99
In Poor , Caleb Femi combines poetry and original photography to explore the trials, tribulations, dreams and joys of young Black boys in twenty-first century Peckham. He contemplates the ways in which they are informed by the built environment of concrete walls and gentrifying neighbourhoods that form their stage, writes a coded, near-mythical history of the personalities and sagas of his South London youth, and pays tribute to the rappers and artists who spoke to their lives.
Above all, this is a tribute to the world that shaped a poet, and to the people forging difficult lives and finding magic within it. As Femi writes in one of the final poems of this book: 'I have never loved anything the way I love the endz.'
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Hardback RRP £14.99
Winter, 1617. The sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardo is thrown into a reckless storm. A young woman, Maren, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant. Vardo is now a place of women.
Eighteen months later, a sinister figure arrives. Summoned from Scotland to take control of a place at the edge of the civilized world, Absalom Cornet knows what he needs to do to bring the women of the island to heel. With him travels his young wife, Ursa. In her new home, and in Maren, Ursa finds something she has never seen before: independent women. But Absalom sees only a place flooded with a terrible evil, one he must root out at all costs . . .
A More Perfect Union by Tammye Huf
Hardback RRP £12.99
When Henry O'Toole escapes the Irish famine and sails to America, he doesn't expect the anti-Irish prejudices that await him. Determined never to starve again, he changes his name to Henry Taylor to secure a job and safeguard his future. Traveling south to Virginia, he meets Sarah, a slave woman torn from her family and sold to another plantation.
This is a love story of epic proportions - a forbidden relationship that has been forged in secrecy, and faces betrayal and jeopardy at every turn.
My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long
Paperback RRP £10.99
Rachel Long's much-anticipated debut collection of poems, My Darling from the Lions , announces the arrival of a thrilling new presence in poetry.
Each poem has a vivid story to tell - of family quirks, the perils of dating, the grip of religion or sexual awakening - stories that are, by turn, emotionally insightful, politically conscious, wise, funny and outrageous.
Long reveals herself as a razor-sharp and original voice on the issues of sexual politics and cultural inheritance that polarize our current moment. But it's her refreshing commitment to the power of the individual poem that will leave the reader turning each page in eager anticipation: here is an immediate,wide-awake poetry that entertains royally, without sacrificing a note of its urgency or remarkable skill.
The Address Book: What Street Addresses Reveal about Identity, Race, Wealth and Power by Deirdre Mask
Hardback RRP £16.99
Paperback RRP £9.99 (Publication date 1st April)
When most people think about street addresses they think of parcel deliveries, or visitors finding their way. But who numbered the first house, and where, and why? What can addresses tell us about who we are and how we live together?
Deirdre Mask looks at the fate of streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr., how ancient Romans found their way, and why Bobby Sands is memorialised in Tehran. She explores why it matters if, like millions of people today, you don't have an address. From cholera epidemics to tax hungry monarchs, Mask discovers the different ways street names are created, celebrated, and in some cases, banned.
Full of eye-opening facts, fascinating people and hidden history, this book shows how addresses are about identity, class and race. But most of all they are about power: the power to name, to hide, to decide who counts, who doesn't, and why.
Are We Home Yet? By Katy Massey
Paperback RRP
Spanning the years from 1935 to 2010, Are We Home Yet? is the moving and funny story of a girl and her mother.
As a girl, Katy accidentally discovers her mother is earning money as a sex worker at the family home, rupturing their bond. As an adult, Katy contends with grief and mental health challenges before she and her mother attempt to heal their relationship. From Canada, to Leeds and Jamaica, and exploring shame, immigration and class, the pair share their stories but struggle to understand each other's choices in a fast-changing world.
By revealing their truths, can these two strong women call a truce on their hostilities and overcome the oppressive ghosts of the past?
The First Woman by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
Hardback RRP £16.99
For one young girl, discovering what it means to become a woman in a family, a community and a country determined to silence her will take all the courage she has.
Jennifer Makumbi has written a sweeping tale of longing and rebellion, at once epic and deeply personal, steeped in an intoxicating mix of ancient Ugandan folklore and modern feminism, that will linger in the memory long after the final page.
Rainbow Milk by Paul Mendez
Paperback RRP £8.99
Rainbow Milk is an intersectional coming-of-age story, following nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of a Jehovah's Witness upbringing and the legacies of the Windrush generation.
A bold exploration of race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures. Paul Mendez is a fervent new writer with an original and urgent voice.
What's Left of Me is Yours by Stephanie Scott
Paperback RRP £8.99
Publication Date 18th March
A gripping debut set in modern-day Tokyo and inspired by a true crime, What's Left of Me Is Yours follows a young woman's search for the truth about her mother's life - and her murder.
Told from alternating points of view and across the breathtaking landscapes of Japan, What's Left of Me Is Yours explores the thorny psychological and moral grounds of the actions we take in the name of love, asking where we draw the line between passion and possession.
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