Grow Where They Fall

'An elegant coming-of-age tale about confronting the ghosts of our childhood, queer love and finding the courage to live a bigger and better life for ourselves' The i Bright and precocious ten-year-old Kwame Akromah knows how to behave. He knows the importance of good manners, how to stay at the top of the class and out of the way when his mother and father are angry with each other. But when his charismatic cousin Yaw arrives from Ghana to live with the family while he looks for work, the rules Kwame has learned about the world can no longer guide him. Twenty years later, Kwame is a secondary-school teacher, popular with his students and depended on by his friends. His is a life spent elegantly weaving between the classroom, the labyrinth of Grindr politics and increasingly intermittent visits to his parents' home. Behind the confident fa ade, however, he is as driven by caution as he was as a boy. But when electrifying changemaker Marcus Felix is appointed as headteacher, Kwame must reckon with himself as he never has before. Can he face the ghosts of his childhood? How will he learn to move through the world without losing who he is? And where does existing stop and living begin?

About the Author :
Michael Donkor was born in London to Ghanaian parents. He studied English at Wadham College, Oxford, followed by a Masters in Creative Writing at Royal Holloway. His first novel, Hold, was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prizes. He is a frequent contributor to outlets including the Guardian, the TLS and the Independent.

Review :
Hugely enjoyable and very moving, Donkor's frank, clear-eyed and funny prose is so refreshing - an important voice in contemporary British fiction I loved every shining moment. In this radiant, deeply felt novel, Michael Donkor offers us the complexities of modern life - messy love, aching loss, our capacity for forgiveness, dignity and self-acceptance - with all the grace and fluent clarity of a singular, open-hearted storyteller A refreshing and beautifully observed queer narrative that centres someone who is, like many of us, simply seeking joy in a world we are not responsible for Donkor is a real talent His work has an immediacy and a warmth to it and his is a world you want to enter Donkor is a master-weaver, threading together a story rich in layers and nuance. The characters are bursting out of their restraints to find what truly suits them. Beautiful, generous story-telling, compelling characters and so much delicious depth Elegant ... An author confident of his storytelling skills, and rightly so An elegant coming-of-age tale about confronting the ghosts of our childhood, queer love and finding the courage to live a bigger and better life for ourselves Donkor revels in the detail of everyday life in this languorous coming-of-age novel ... Donkor both rejects many of the knee-jerk pieties about race while lending his story an easy, conversational intimacy. A novel that glows with the ache of being alive Deftly interweaving the stories of two big reckonings in Kwame’s life – first as a 10-year-old and again two decades later – this coming of age tale about queer love and the ghosts of our past deserves to be treasured widely