Product Description
Sweetness in the Skin
Author: Ishi Robinson
Format: Paperback
Shortlisted for the 2025 Ocm Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Pumkin Patterson dreams of a life beyond her Jamaican hometown. But what we dream of and where we belong aren't always the same thing...
'A dazzling coming-of-age novel with an unforgettable heroine' — Red
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Eleven-year-old Pumpin knows a few things:
That her mother has never loved her
That Aunt Sophie does
That baking makes everything better
And France is a long way from her Jamaican home
What Pumkin doesn't know is:
What will happen when Aunt Sophie leaves for France
How far a mother can go to hurt a daughter
Why a secret can rot a family
That her cakes might just help save her life
Whatever happens, Pumkin knows she needs someone to love her.
But she just doesn't know who . . .
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Praise for Sweetness in the Skin
'Serves up a taste of Jamaica that will have you craving coconut drops, gizzada and sweet potato pudding' — The Times
'Wonderful, tender, vivid' — Glamour
About the Author
Ishi Robinson was born and raised in Kingston, Jamaica. She has lived in Bern, Toronto, Rome, London and now lives in Berlin with her Czech husband. Her first published work was a short story in Jamaica’s national newspaper when she was eleven years old. At seventeen, she sent a letter to her father from Switzerland that he thought was so funny he sent it to the other national newspaper, which snagged her a weekly column on teenage life in Kingston. She also previously wrote a weekly column on life as an expat in Rome for a now defunct online magazine. She got back into fiction writing in Berlin, from where she has published short stories in several online publications and one anthology. Sweetness in the Skin is her first novel.
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