When We Were Birds – Banwo Ayanna Lloyd (2023)

Mesmerising, mythic and timeless, the most unmissable debut novel of 2022 now out in paperback - for fans of Arundhati Roy, Toni Morrison and Monique Roffey. Recommended Read for 2022 in the Observer, New Statesman, Irish Times, Buzzfeed, Good Housekeeping, The Daily Nerd, Essence and more. '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,…