Audiobooks Narrated by Safiya Sinclair

How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir

‘Dazzling. Potent. Vital’ TARA WESTOVER ‘To read it is to believe that words can save’ MARLON JAMES ‘I adored this book … Unforgettable, heartbreaking and heartwarming’ ELIF SHAFAK ‘A breathless, scorching memoir of a girlhood’ NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW An extraordinary and inspiring memoir of family, education and resilience, from award-winning poet Safiya Sinclair. There was more than one way to be lost, more than one way to be saved. Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world just beyond their gate. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything: nowhere but home and school, no friends but this family and no future but this path. Her mother did what she could to bring joy to her children with books and poetry. But as Safiya’s imagination reached beyond its restrictive borders, her burgeoning independence brought with it ever greater clashes with her father. Soon she realised that if she was to live at all, she had to find some way to leave home. But how? In seeking to understand the past of her family, Safiya Sinclair takes readers inside a world that is little understood by those outside it and offers an astonishing personal reckoning. How to Say Babylon is an unforgettable story of a young woman’s determination to live life on her own terms. ‘Electrifying’ Observer ‘An essential memoir’ Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing ‘Heart-warming, tender and fierce’ Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father ‘One of the most gut-wrenching, soul-stirring, electrifying memoirs I've ever read’ Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun ‘Full of courage and poetry … Has the power of truth telling’ Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch ‘Atmospheric and completely absorbing, this is a fascinating story lushly told’ Diana Evans, author of A House for Alice ‘Sinclair possesses a rare gift … Every sentence sings’ Imani Perry, author of South to America

Safiya Sinclair (Author), Safiya Sinclair (Narrator)

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Cannibal

A Guardian most anticipated book for 2020 'Cannibal is nothing less than an entrancing debut that reveals the teeming intellect and ravishing lucidity of a young poet in full possession of her literary powers.' – Major Jackson Colliding with and confronting Shakespeare's The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems in Safiya Sinclair's Cannibal beautifully evoke the poet's Jamaican childhood and reach beyond to explore history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness, and exile. She evokes a home no longer accessible and a body at times uninhabitable, often mirrored by a hybrid Eve/Caliban figure. Blooming with intense lyricism and fertile imagery, these full-blooded poems are elegant, mythic, and intricately woven. Here the female body is a dark landscape; the female body is cannibal. Sinclair shocks and delights her readers with her willingness to disorient and provoke. Cannibal marks the arrival of a thrilling and essential new lyrical voice.

Safiya Sinclair (Author), Safiya Sinclair (Narrator)

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