A History of Burning

Winner of the Desmond Elliot Prize 2020

A beautiful, brutal and breath-taking novel-in-verse from one of the brightest young British writers of today.

Anansi, your four gifts raised to nyame granted you no power over the stories I tell...

This is the story of K.K is sent into care before a year marks his birth. He grows up in fields and woods, and he is happy, he thinks. When K is eleven, the city reclaims him. He returns to an unknown mother and a part-time father, trading the fields for flats and a community that is alien to him.

Slowly, he finds friends. Eventually, he finds love.

He learns how to navigate the city. But as he grows, he begins to realise that he needs more than the city can provide. He is a man made of pieces. Pieces that are slowly breaking apart.

That Reminds Me is the story of one young man, from birth to adulthood, told in fragments of memory. It explores questions of identity, belonging, addiction, sexuality, violence, family and religion.

It is a deeply moving and completely original work of literature from one of the brightest British writers of today.