One of Stylist's Best Memoirs for Summer 2021

'A thing of great beauty.' Paris Review

In letters addressed to their friends, to members of their family - both biological and chosen - and to fellow storytellers, Akwaeke describes the shape of a life lived in overlapping realities. Through heartbreak, chronic pain, intimacy with death, becoming a beast, this is embodiment as a nonhuman: outside the boundaries imposed by expectations and legibility. This book is an account of the grueling work of realignment and remaking necessary to carve out a future for oneself.

The result is a Black spirit memoir: a powerful, raw unfolding of identity.

'An audacious sojourn through the terror and beauty of refusing to explain yourself. ' New York Times

A raw exploration of identity that shatters boundaries and explodes the way we think about the idea of the self

About the Author
Akwaeke Emezi (they/them) is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Death of Vivek Oji, which was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Orwell Prize and is shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award; Pet, a finalist for the National Book Award for Young People's Literature; Freshwater, which was named a New York Times Notable Book, longlisted for both the Wellcome Book Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize; and most recently, their second young adult novel, BITTER. Selected as a 5 Under 35 honoree by the National Book Foundation and featured on the cover of Time as a Next Generation Leader, they are based in liminal spaces.


Book Information
ISBN 9780571366149
Author Akwaeke Emezi
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Faber & Faber
Publisher Faber & Faber
Weight(grams) 352g
Dimensions(mm) 216mm * 135mm * 17mm