When We Were Birds

By (author) Banwo, Ayanna Lloyd
Description:

Winner of the BOCAS Prize for Fiction 2023
Winner of for the Authors'' Club Best First Novel Award 2023
Shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize 2023
Shortlisted for the McKitterick Prize 2023
Shortlisted for the Kitschies Golden Tentacle Award 2023
Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award 2023

''BELIEVE THE HYPE'' Stella

''A searing symphony of magic and loss, love and hope'' Marlon James

''A mesmerising love story, achingly tender'' Bolu Babalola

Darwin is a down-on-his-luck gravedigger, newly arrived in the Trinidadian city of Port Angeles to seek his fortune, young and beautiful and lost. Estranged from his mother and the Rastafari faith she taught him, he is convinced that the father he never met may be waiting for him somewhere amid these bustling streets.

Meanwhile in an old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide''s mother is dying. And she is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: the power to talk to the dead. The women of Yejide''s family are human but also not - descended from corbeau, the black birds that fly east at sunset, taking with them the souls of the dead.

Darwin and Yejide both have something that the other needs. Their destinies are intertwined, and they will find one another in the sprawling, ancient cemetery at the heart of the island, where trouble is brewing...

Rich with magic and wisdom, When We Were Birds is an exuberant masterpiece that conjures and mesmerises on every line. Ayanna Lloyd Banwo weaves an unforgettable story of loss and renewal, darkness and light; a triumphant reckoning with a grief that runs back generations and a defiant, joyful affirmation of hope.

''Exceptional'' Jacob Ross

''Exquisite'' Avni Doshi

''It''s a knockout, and Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a star'' Niven Govinden

''When We Were Birds marks the emergence of a distinctive and powerful voice'' Pat Barker, author of The Silence of the Girls

Review quote:
This magical tale of a Trinidadian gravedigger searching for a father he never met proves we should believe the hype
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Luminous, gripping, packed with drama, colour and tension... A thoroughly original and emotionally rich examination of love, grief and inheritance... Like the vultures which escort dead souls to the afterlife, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo''s novel takes flight and soars
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Tender and lonely and powerful... A love letter to Trinidad [and] a vivid debut about romance and loss in the Caribbean... It also centres another kind of love: the complexity of mothering and its beautiful and terrible consequences... Lloyd Banwo conjures an aching sexual energy, places the lovers in deliciously paced jeopardy and takes the tale to an agreeably thundery climax
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Beguiling, mesmerising, vibrantly alive... There''s a lovely dreaminess to the prose and a heart-stopping romance alongside the supernatural magic but it''s a novel firmly rooted in the nitty gritty of life
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Soulful, haunting, a deep-rooted love story... Uniquely tackling themes of grief, identity and acceptance, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo''s rhythmic prose builds tension at every step... A tale of finding one''s self
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Lyrical, powerful, thought-provoking... This is a book about the histories we try to erase and the importance of reckoning with them. It is about ''small lives''; about honouring deaths that have gone ''unclaimed'', ''unremembered'', ''unmourned''
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Suffused with myth and magic, eerie, enchanting... The atmosphere is intensely conjured, with squallin