The Book Of Echoes

Narrated by the soul of an African slave woman, this is a searing debut novel about hope, redemption and the scars of history

Over two hundred years ago in Africa, a woman tosses her young son to safety as she is hauled away by slavers. After a brutal sea passage, her second child, a baby girl, is snatched away. Although the woman doesn’t know it yet, her spirit is destined to roam the earth in search of her lost children.

Her spirit will make its way to modern-day England, where she watches teenage Michael trying to stay out of trouble as riots spit and boil on the streets of Brixton, and to a sun-baked village in Nigeria, where Ngozi struggles to escape her low-caste status.

As the invisible threads that draw these two lives together are pulled ever tighter, The Book of Echoes asks: how can we overcome the traumas of the past when they are woven so inextricably with the present? Humming with horror and beauty, Rosanna Amaka’s remarkable debut marks her as a vibrant new voice in fiction.