Show Me A Mountain - Hardcover

Young, Kerry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408869551 ISBN 13: 9781408869550

Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus, 2016

Synopsis

From the Costa- and Commonwealth-shortlisted author of Pao, a story of revolution and oppression, privilege and poverty, love and betrayal, set against the backdrop of Jamaican independence.

Fay Wong is a woman caught between worlds. Her father is a Chinese immigrant who conjured a fortune out of nothing; her mother, of African heritage, grew up on a plantation and now reigns over their mansion on Lady Musgrave Road, sipping Earl Grey tea in the Kingston afternoons.

But the Chinatown haunts where her father spends his time are out of bounds to Fay, and the rooms of Lady Musgrave Road are filled with her mother's long-kept secrets and uncontrollable rages--rages against which Fay rebels as she grows from a girl into a headstrong woman.

As she tries to escape the restraints of her privileged upbringing, striving for independence in a homeland that is trying to do the same, Fay's eyes are opened to a Jamaica she was never meant to see. She encounters gangsters and revolutionaries, priests and prostitutes, and witnesses great sacrifices and betrayals. But when her mother decides that she must marry the racketeer Yang Pao, she finds herself on a journey that leads to sacrifices and betrayals of her own. In Show Me A Mountain, Kerry Young creates a vivid portrait of a woman and a country struggling to fashion a future unburdened by the past.

About this title

About the Author

Kerry Young was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She moved to England in 1965 and lives in Leicestershire. Kerry is a Reader for the Literary Consultancy and a tutor for the Arvon foundation. She is also honorary assistant professor in the School of English at the University of Nottingham and Honorary Creative Writing Fellow at the University of Leicester. She was writer-in-residence at the University of Sheffield (2014–2016) as a part of the Royal Literary Fund Fellowship program.

www.kerryyoung.co.uk

Review

"Highly recommended, shocking, complex and riveting historical fiction!" - Historical Novel Review

"Show Me a Mountain cracks open a world many only see as a paradise and would pair well with other recent fiction about Jamaica, like Nicole Dennis-Benn's Here Comes the Sun (2016) and Marlon James' A Brief History of Seven Killings (2014)." - Booklist

"Kerry Young . . . pens an incredibly heart breaking historical fiction. . . A story of losing love and again finding it through an exotic country and learning to forgive the past." - Book Stop Corner

"Kerry Young is a stand-alone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region. Her stories are gritty and also funny and very real." - Monique Roffey on GLORIA

"Kerry Young tells the absorbing, uplifting story of a young woman’s escape from the brutal poverty of rural Jamaica to a new life in the violent world of its capital, Kingston . . . Written in the gentle, hypnotic patois and encompassing the birth pangs of Jamaican independence, this is a highly evocative portrait of a country in transition, and of one woman’s search for self-awareness and self-respect." - Mail on Sunday on GLORIA

"A vivid portrayal . . . Kerry Young's heartfelt, sparky and affecting debut novel is a chronicle of multicultural Jamaica, both in its cultural richness and in its strife and tensions." - Guardian on PAO

"[An] eye-opening, rambunctious debut . . . Young leads from the heart to celebrate a resilient world that tourists never see. You'll enjoy the view." - Kirkus Reviews on PAO

"Kerry Young brings a little-known slice of Jamaica to vivid life." - National Geographic Traveler on PAO

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Circus
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 1408869551
• ISBN 13: 9781408869550
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 400