Fire Rush
A Novel
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- CHF 4.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
WINNER OF THE PEN/OPEN BOOK AWARD
FINALIST FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF 2023
“[A] powerful debut.” —The Washington Post
“An exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer.” —Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
Set amid the Jamaican diaspora in London at the dawn of 1980s, a mesmerizing story of love, loss, and self-discovery that vibrates with the liberating power of music
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she goes raving with her friends, the “Tombstone Estate gyals,” at The Crypt, an underground dub reggae club in their industrial town on the outskirts of London. Raised by her distant father after her mother’s disappearance when she was a girl, Yamaye craves the oblivion of sound - a chance to escape into the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights, to discover who she really is in the dance-hall darkness.
When Yamaye meets Moose, a soulful carpenter who shares her Jamaican heritage, a path toward a different kind of future seems to open. But then, Babylon rushes in. In a devastating cascade of violence that pits state power against her loved ones and her community, Yamaye loses everything. Friendless and adrift, she embarks on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her to the Bristol underworld and, finally, to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
The unforgettable story of one young woman’s search for home, animated by a ferocity of vision, electrifying music, and the Jamaican spiritual imagination, Fire Rush is a blazing achievement from a brilliant voice in contemporary fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Crooks's immersive debut, a young Jamaican woman grapples with grief and finds her way in the 1980s English dub scene. Yamaye, 24, lives with her father on the outskirts of London and frequents underground dance parties with her friends, an Irish woman named Rumer and a self-assured Jamaican named Asase. One night at a club, Yamaye meets quiet artist Marlon "Moose" Bohiti. The two fall in love, but then Moose is killed by London police outside his woodworking shop, having been accused of attacking an officer. Meanwhile, Rumer returns to Ireland, and Asase, in a rage due to abuse by a local hustler, stabs a man and is sent to prison. Though a social justice organization rallies behind Moose's case, Yamaye despairs: "Now I've been thrown overboard into a dark sea... nothing to hold on to but coldness and darkness for centuries to come." From these depths, Crooks chronicles an incredible story of Yamaye's struggles and triumphs. First, she's exploited by a Bristol art thief and is forced into helping with his heists. Eventually, she channels her anger into gigs as an MC under the moniker Sonix Dominatrix. The rich descriptions of Yamaye and her friends skanking to the music are immersive and gesture at the spirits of Yamaye's Jamaican forebears: "We're dancing in darkness, skinning up with the dead. I feel them twisting around me, round and round, rattles on their wrists and ankles, broken-beat bodies of sound." This is a triumph.
