How To Say Babylon

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

'Vivid and empowering' GILLIAN ANDERSON

'A stunning book’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO

‘Dazzling’ TARA WESTOVER

‘A story about hope, imagination and resilience’ GUARDIAN

An award-winning, inspiring memoir of family, education and resilience.

Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world just beyond their gate. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything.

Her mother did what she could to bring joy to her children with books and poetry. But as Safiya’s imagination reached beyond its restrictive borders, her burgeoning independence brought with it ever greater clashes with her father. Soon she realised that if she was to live at all, she had to find some way to leave home. But how?

How to Say Babylon is an unforgettable story of a young woman’s determination to live life on her own terms.

A Guardian and Observer summer read.

‘I adored this book … Unforgettable’ ELIF SHAFAK

‘Electrifying’ OBSERVER

‘To read it is to believe that words can save’ MARLON JAMES

‘Breathless, scorching’ NEW YORK TIMES

About the author

Safiya Sinclair was born and raised in Montego Bay, Jamaica. She is the author of Cannibal, winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award in Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Poetry, and the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Cannibal was selected as one of the American Library Association’s Notable Books of the Year, was a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award and the Seamus Heaney First Book Award in the UK, and was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, The Nation, Poetry and elsewhere. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.