Things They Lost

From the 2014 Caine Prize winner comes an astonishing debut novel, riven through with mystery and magic, about a daughter's quest to save her mother

Ayosa is a wandering spirit joyous, exuberant, filled to the brim with longing. Her only companions in the Kenyan town she calls home are as lonely as Ayosa herself — the ghostly Fatumas, the sullen milkman and Sindano, the owner of a cafee that no one ever visits.

But a curse hangs over the women in Ayosa's family, a curse which has blighted the life of her mother, Nabumbo Promise. When her new friend Mbui offers her an alternative life, one that would involve leaving Nabumbo Promise behind, Ayosa must decide how much she owes her fearsome, mercurial mama.

Set at the intersection of the spirit world and the human one, suffused with Kenyan folklore and myth, Things They Lost is an unforgettable novel about mothers and daughters, about ghostly longing and about love at its most intoxicating and dangerous, from a standout new literary voice.

ISBN: 9780861544912 | Published: 30 May 2023 (first published 2022) | Paperback | 368 pages