The Wild Wind

"An emotionally resonant, semi-autobiographical story about growth and change and coming to terms with loss" from the Writers' Guild Award-winning author (The Herald).

Vanish to a different land with Sissy Olikara. Sissy is twelve years old, living with her parents and baby brother on a school campus outside of Lusaka. It is 1978, and the political situation in Zambia is becoming volatile. The family enjoy a gentle life until, suddenly, Sissy's father leaves and returns to India.


His departure brings about a chain of events which force Sissy into the adult world and have profound, long-lasting consequences.


Moving back and forth in time as the adult Sissy reflects on her childhood, The Wild Wind is a haunting, absorbing coming-of-age tale of lost loves and lost innocence—one that takes readers on a journey into a young woman's past and its repercussions on her future.

Featured on The Guardian's "Not the Booker Longlist, 2019"

"A finely structure family story . . . It is written with serious respect for its characters and their story. There are no villains. It is about people in credible situations and people who are almost all trying to behave well. This is difficult to bring off and Kalayil is evidently a novelist of real talent." —Yorkshire Post

"Follows Sissy Olikara, a US-based translator reflecting on her 1970s childhood in the outskirts of the Zambian capital Lusaka. The end result is profound and long-lasting." —Sunday Post