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SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023
AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR

It’s time to dance, to love, to be free…

‘Mesmerising’ BERNARDINE EVARISTO, author of Girl, Woman, Other
‘Fabulous’ MAGGIE O’FARRELL, author of Hamnet
‘Beautiful’ CALEB AZUMAH NELSON, author of Open Water

Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club on the outskirts of London. Then everything changes. Yamaye meets Moose, who she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.

After their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that leads her to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.

***A SUNDAY TIMES BEST NOVEL AND GUARDIAN BEST FICTION BOOK OF 2023***

‘A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction’ TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

‘Scorching… We follow Yamaye through love, loss and peril, as she chases her dreams and connects with her heritage’ GUARDIAN

‘Ambitious, atmospheric… A novel of passion and anger’ SUNDAY TIMES

‘A rich and rhythmic story about love and music’ I

Publisher Review

I was blown away by Fire Rush - an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer... her mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to re-read it. -- Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER This beautiful, sprawling narrative is wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence. Crooks' novel haunts but make space for hope as well. -- Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of OPEN WATER A brilliant, exuberant novel. Full of beauty, musicality and feminist power. -- Irenosen Okojie, author of NUDIBRANCH Fire Rush... [is] a window into the dub scene at the time, with rhythmic, lyrical writing and a story about raving, love and the impact of police violence. * Vogue *