Fire Rush

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023* Immerse yourself in an electric story of dub reggae, love, loss and Black womanhood.He takes my hand, pulls me to him. 'This is our dancing time.''I was blown away by Fire Rush ... Mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory' Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, OtherYamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide - a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry.But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation where past and present collide with explosive consequences.'Wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence' Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of Open Water*AN OBSERVER TOP TEN NEW NOVEL 2023*5* READER REVIEWS:'This novel takes you on an emotional and unforgettable journey''This book has it all ... You're immersed into something really special''A stunning debut novel... as relevant to today's racial climate as the 1970s... it felt musical, with dub music almost a secondary character in the novel'

Remarkable... In terms of sheer lyrical force it stands head and shoulders above most debuts., 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 reread it., 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., An immersive debut ... This is a triumph., 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 ... Both a page turner and a literary novel... truly remarkable.

Jacqueline Crooks grew up in 70s and 80s Southall, part of London's migrant community carving out a space through music, culture and politics. Immersed in the gang underworld as a young woman, she later discovered the power of writing and music to help her look outwards and engage differently with the world - a power that has driven her ever since, from her work with charities to her short stories, which have been nominated for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, the Wasafiri New Writing Prize and the BBC National Short Story Award.

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