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When We Were Birds cover art

When We Were Birds

Written by: Ayanna Lloyd Banwo
Narrated by: Sydney Darius, Wendell Manwarren
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Publisher's Summary

A mythic love story set in Trinidad, Ayanna Lloyd Banwo's radiant debut is a masterwork of lush imagination and exuberant storytelling—a spellbinding and hopeful novel about inheritance, loss, and love's seismic power to heal.

"Roots the reader in [Trinidad’s] traditions and rituals [and] ... in the glorious matriarchy by which lineage is upheld. The result is a depiction of ordinary life that’s full and breathtaking."—The New York Times Book Review

In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: one St Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out.

Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. He has never been to a funeral, much less seen a dead body. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the life his mother built for him in order to provide for them both. Newly shorn of his dreadlocks and his past, and determined to prove himself, Darwin finds himself adrift in a city electric with possibility and danger.

Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves and a reckoning with fate beckons them both.

©2022 Ayanna Lloyd Banwo (P)2022 Random House Audio

What the critics say

Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by The Observer, BuzzFeed, Essence, Nylon, Good Housekeeping, Business Insider, NBC, Ms. Magazine, Book Riot, and more
 

"A thoroughly original and emotionally rich examination of love, grief and inheritance…. When We Were Birds is full of life. Ms. Lloyd Banwo ensures that the scenes it hosts are packed with drama, color and tension, particularly in her gripping finale…. The rhythms of Ms. Lloyd Banwo’s narrative voice help keep the reader rapt. Like the corbeaux - vultures which, in the author’s invented mythology, escort dead souls to the afterlife - her novel takes flight and soars." (The Economist)

"[A] spellbinding novel.... The poetic prose in Ayanna Lloyd Banwo’s debut novel captivates from the start.... When We Were Birds is a unique love story whose magical setting in Trinidad takes center stage." (Real Simple)

"[A] masterly debut novel. It announces an important new voice in fiction, at once grounded and mythic in its scope and carried by an incantatory prose style that recalls Arundhati Roy’s hugely impactful debut, The God of Small Things…. Her writing draws on grief, but Lloyd Banwo’s literary gift lies in her capacity to transfigure that emotion - to conjure a cosmic landscape where the living coexist among the dead." (The Observer)

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A Beautiful Story and an Ode to Trinidad

A beautiful tale of death, ancestry, motherhood, grief, destiny, love, ritual and duty. You will be transported to this real world and the other worlds contained within it. This was a magical journey that never lets the reader go This is also the MOST authentic sounding Trini audiobook I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Amazing narration that brought not only the other-wordly characters but the sights and sounds of the island to life. The colloquial banter is accurate and melodious.

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