House of Ashes by Monique Roffey
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Blurb: The City of Silk is seething. The corrupt government has been ruling over the people too long and the city is becoming restless. Then one hot evening The Leader, a head of a group of rebels, gathers his followers and tells them: ‘Today, we will be making history. For ourselves, and our fellow countrymen of Sans Amen.’ And so a ragtag collection of men and boys take up arms and storm two of the most important buildings in the city: the house of power and the television studios. Together they will take back what is rightfully theirs. Caught up in the madness is Ashes. A bookish, learned man, he has been swept up by The Leader’s powerful rhetoric. But now that words have turned to action he is not so sure anymore. And trapped inside the government building with the rebels is Aspasia. A proud woman, a mother of boys, she sees much of her sons in these boys with guns in their hands and power in their eyes. (Simon & Schuster, July 2014)
Lucy Scholes, The Observer
“Roffey’s writing is raw and visceral and she thrusts her readers headlong into the very middle of the action, her pen as powerful as the butts of the guns shoved in her hostages’ backs.”
Ian Thomson, The Daily Telegraph
“Roffey’s knuckle-whitening novel goes to the heart of questions of political temptation and folly; it grips from beginning to end.”
Liz Jensen, The Guardian
“Deploying the deep, humane wisdom that has become a hallmark of Roffey’s increasingly sure writing, the novel delivers its final, bittersweet coup with a fearlessness and grace that richly satisfies.”
John Self, The Times
“This is the third book in a loose trilogy — connected by setting rather than characters or story — following Archipelago and the Orange Prize-shortlisted The White Woman on the Green Bicycle. But where those books were praised for their vivid descriptions of the Caribbean, here Roffey adopts plain, stripped-down language; it fits both the gripping plot and the setting, as the reader is held hostage in a single room for most of the book’s length.”
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