Wild Fires

*WINNER OF THE 2023 FRED KERNER BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION*

*LONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS*

*FINALIST FOR THE 2023 RAKUTEN KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE*

Grief is like an inside joke: you have to have been there to really get it.

Everything Cassandra Rampersad knows about her family history has been overheard: whispered behind a closed door or written in a notebook stowed away. Cassandra has always been curious, and when a death in the family means she has to return home to Toronto, it seems like the perfect opportunity to finally discover what it is that no one else will talk about.

But uncovering the past will never be easy when it has stayed hidden for so long. And with every new revelation, Cassandra realises that there is a reason that her family has never been good at grieving…

A powerful meditation on memory and loss, Wild Fires is a beautifully crafted novel from a stunning new literary voice.

Reviews

‘A gem of a book: beautifully crafted, emotionally insightful, and full of sharply-drawn characters who linger long in the memory. Sophie is a literary star in the making’ LAURA BARNETT, #1 bestselling author of The Versions of Us

‘An incredibly intimate, tender story about grief, mourning, silences and secrets, loss, identity, love, sisters/mothers, and home… I'm hooked’ YVONNE BATTLE-FELTON, author of Remembered

‘I enjoyed it so much – one of my favourite things in literature is to be transported to a different place, ideally straight into the heart of a family whose history and characters are as alive while I’m reading as my own, and that was the experience that Wild Fires gave me. It reminded me of The God of Small Things, with the same intricate, confounding but completely relatable family relationships, secrets and darkness; I loved the rhythm of the language and the sharpness of the (often unexpectedly funny) observations … a beautiful book’ EMILY ITAMI, author of Fault Lines

‘A moving and compelling novel that explores a family's grief through both their shared stories and the words that should have stayed unspoken’ LOUISE HARE, author of This Lovely City

‘A dizzying, mesmerising puzzle of a novel… readers will find themselves so deeply invested and absorbed in this tale, and unable to forget it’ KERRY CLARE, author of Asking for a Friend

There’s so much beauty in this book … I finished the last page with my eyes wet and my heart full’ DIANA FITZGERALD BRYDEN, author of No Place Strange

About the author

WILD FIRES is Sophie Jai's debut novel. She was selected as a 2020 Writer-in-Residence and Visiting Fellow at the University of Oxford for WILD FIRES, and was longlisted for the 2019 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award for a First Novel. Jai was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She splits her time between Toronto and London.