A Tall History of Sugar

‘Captivating from the very first page’ Jennifer EganDiscovered amidst a tangle of sea grape trees by the childless Rachel Fisher, baby Moshe’s provenance is a thing of myth and mystery; his unusual appearance, with blueish, translucent skin and duo-toned hair, only serves to compound his mystique.Equally feared and ridiculed by peers as he grows up, he finds a surprising kindred soul in the striking and bold Arrienne Christie, but their complex relationship is fraught with obstacles that tear them apart as powerfully as they are drawn together.Beginning in the late 1950s, four years before Jamaica’s independence from colonial rule, A Tall History of Sugar’s epic love story sweeps between a rural Jamaica, scarred by the legacies of colonialism, and an England increasingly riven by race riots and class division.

Reviews of A Tall History of Sugar

A Tall History of Sugar is captivating from the very first page. Mythic in dimension yet movingly human in its details, alive with atmospheric richness, it heralds a fascinating new voice in English-language fiction — JENNIFER EGAN A novel of Jamaica, brimming with magic, passion and history . . . Forbes's writing combines the gale-force imagination of Margaret Atwood with the lyrical pointillism of Toni Morrison . . . This is a book for savouring * * New York Times * *