★已授權美、英、德！
★已由片商Hera Pictures買下電視劇改編版權
★入圍狄倫．湯瑪斯獎（Dylan Thomas Prize）
★入圍2019年戴斯蒙．艾略特獎（Desmond Elliott Prize）
★入圍2019年Audie Award的文學小說獎
★入圍2018年愛丁堡首作書獎
★獲選《觀察家》2018年年度好書
★獲選《Brittle Paper》2018年年度傑出非洲好書
★獲得多家英美報章雜誌選書，包括《紐約郵報》、《圖書館期刊》、CBC、Buzzfeed。


Moving between Ghana and London, Hold is an intimate, moving, powerful coming-of-age novel. It’s a story of friendship and family, shame and forgiveness; of learning what we should cling to, and when we need to let go.

Belinda knows how to follow the rules. As a housegirl, she has learnt the right way to polish water glasses, to wash and fold a hundred handkerchiefs, and to keep a tight lid on memories of the village she left behind when she came to Kumasi.

Mary is still learning the rules. Eleven-years old and irrepressible, the young housegirl-in-training is the little sister Belinda never had.

Amma has had enough of the rules. A straight-A pupil at her exclusive South-London school, she has always been the pride of her Ghanaian parents. Until now. Watching their once-confident teenager grow sullen and wayward, they decide that sensible Belinda might be just the shining example Amma needs.

So Belinda is summoned from Ghana to London, and must leave Mary to befriend a troubled girl who shows no desire for her friendship. She encounters a city as bewildering as it is thrilling, and tries to impose order on her unsettling new world.
As the Brixton summer turns to Autumn, Belinda and Amma are surprised to discover the beginnings of an unexpected kinship. But when the cracks in their defences open up, the secrets they have both been holding tightly threaten to seep out.

 

Michael Donkor was born in London, to Ghanaian parents, and is a teacher by profession. Many of the issues in this novel are close to his heart, and his writing won him a place on the Writers’ Centre Inspires Scheme in 2014, where he received a year’s mentoring from Daniel Hahn.