Stubborn Archivist

'I read Stubborn Archivist in a ravenous gulp. It's stunning: so articulate about what it means to live between two languages and countries, tenderly unravelling the knots of unbelonging' Olivia Laing'My goodness. Yara Rodrigues-Fowler has conjured a work of rare power, startlingly original form, and devastating beauty. This novel is a triumph'Musa Okwonga'Stubborn Archivist is an intimate and wonderfully resourceful exploration of origins. In its quest to uncover what a person is made of it digs deeply into the living body, as well as tracing back through its tangled roots. Visceral and elegant, circumspect and vivid, Yara Rodrigues Fowler has a distinctly unhampered way of telling a story, I liked Stubborn Archivist very very much' Claire-Louise Bennett'Every page oozes with caustic wit, despair and self-awareness, creating a lyrical debut that pushes the novel form like no other in recent years. A talent to watch'Nikesh ShuklaWhen your mother considers another country home, it's hard to know where you belong. When the people you live among can't pronounce your name, it's hard to know exactly who you are. And when your body no longer feels like your own, it's hard to understand your place in the world. This is a novel of growing up between cultures, of finding your space within them and of learning to live in a traumatized body. Our stubborn archivist tells her story through history, through family conversations, through the eyes of her mother, her grandmother and her aunt and slowly she begins to emerge into the world, defining her own sense of identity.