Ashani Lewis – författare

**Winner of the 2025 BETTY TRASK PRIZE**''Excellent . . . Ashani Lewis is superbly talented.'' Katherine Rundell''Thoughtful, intelligent and beautifully written . . . Lewis is definitely a new talent to watch.'' Marie Claire, "Best Books of 2024"In one of America''s Happiest Cities, thirty-eight-year-old Elen is trapped under the shadow of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. Her husband has left her. Her belongings are in the boot of her car. Her days are filled mostly with silence and drinking. When she meets four English teenagers in an empty bar, she is enamoured.Luka, Clover, George and Lyn are wealthy squatters, drifting between ski resorts and breaking into empty AirBnBs. When they bring Elen into their fold - and into their messy, entangled relationships - she senses a violent secret that fuels the four''s never-ending disappearing act.Dazzling, cultish and intensely committed to creating their own utopia, they force Elen to ruminate on the irresistible pull of bright young things.She doesn''t understand what they want from her, but how can she leave when she has nowhere else to go?A dark meditation on the dangers and seductive power of youthful idealism, and the slippages between friendship and love, Winter Animals is an extraordinary debut examining freedom, friendship, desire and excess.''A dreamlike, piercing examination of privilege, youth and freedom.'' Cecile Pin, author of Wandering Souls''Atmospheric as hell, beautiful, and delightfully intelligent . . . Think The Secret History written by Raven Leilani.'' Jenny Mustard, author of Okay Days

A STYLIST and RADIO TIMES Most Anticipated Book for 2026''Brilliantly unsettling'' Marie Claire''Complicated, brilliant and achingly real . . . Suckerfish will quietly rip at your heart and then gently stitch it back up again'' The SkinnyThere are women with higher callings than motherhood. And there are their daughters.Kolia is in her twenties, caring for other people''s children and looking for a way out of London''s dead-end days. She is not looking to be pulled back into the orbit of her passionate, fiery, vulnerable mother, but she may have no choice.In Kolia''s childhood, her mother loomed large, both saint and celebrity. Now, she will go to any lengths to repair relations with her estranged daughter.A painful love letter to childishness, innocence and imagination, SUCKERFISH scrutinises what we really owe each other.''The archetypal working, absent, vindictive mother that society is so scared of is fully realised here in complex glory'' Jess Shannon, author of Cleaner''Lewis''s writing is likably feisty and alive, full of verve and pizzazz'' Guardian''Explores the knottiness of care and ambition with great empathy'' Sarvat Hasin, author of Strange Girls