Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

With fast-paced, enveloping scenes like the strobe lights of a rave and beautiful, rhythmic language evocative of dub reggae, Fire Rush is a vibrant journey into clubs booming with music and culture, nights of dance and defiance where safety is an illusion that can vanish like a puff of ganja smoke.

Set in England —and later Jamaica— during the late 70s and early 80s and largely written in patois, the novel follows Yamaye, a young woman of the Afro-Caribbean diaspora as she navigates love, loss and the particular pain of being a Black woman during a time of increasing political unrest; a struggle that feels no less relevant today. Through music and memory, Yamaye must become a resistive force against police brutality, racism, gang violence and gender-based oppression in order to find herself and the freedom that has been stolen from her and her community.

Jacqueline Crooks writes with vivid authenticity and from personal experience about England’s underground scene and its uprising, finding a rare balance between crude realism and surreal story-telling. Fire Rush is a book with the power to fill and break your heart, emotional without becoming melodramatic and thrilling without being shallow; it might be one of the strongest debuts of the year so far.

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Jonathan Cape, 2 Mar