A dazzling debut novel weaving together Caribbean myth and the contemporary story of multiple generations of one immigrant family

A Libreria Book of the Year 2023 'A beautiful ode to the power of storytelling, this novel is steeped in the folklore of the Caribbean and weaves a powerful narrative of identity, trauma, resilience and hope' Eleanor Shearer, author of River Sing Me Home Zora and Sasha Porter don't know much of their Jamaican father Nigel's and Trinidadian mother Beatrice's pasts. What they do know: the mythic stories of Nigel's flight to America on the string of a purple balloon, the violent histories in Beatrice's book of Anansi Stories, that Nigel had a brother, once, and that Beatrice has a tangle of silvery scars on her back. With their parents' marriage falling apart, the pair navigate their own relationships and secrets - Zora has impure thoughts about a jock, and Sasha drinks cheap beer with a girl who binds her chest. A celebration of the power of stories, this startling debut presents a tale of slippery contradictions and an examination of the limits of resilience.

"Sometimes characters are so lively and entertaining, you don't want to say goodbye to them. In wild, firecracker prose, Palmer whirls the reader into a realm where the real and unreal are constantly changing places. It's a stunning feat of storytelling in itself." - Financial Times

"What happens to stories that are born of another land? When they migrate multiple times and across multiple generations? Soraya Palmer's ambitious and passionate debut, The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts, is a thoughtful exploration of these questions ... This is a book written with the gods of storytelling in mind; it highlights what stories can do - that it's not just the stories that evolve with each telling, but we ourselves who are rearranged too" - New York Times Book Review

"The long and winding name of this assertive debut matches the magnitude of the stories within, which draw on folklore to capture the dynamic between two sisters, Zora and Sasha Porter. Their mother's illness and their father's violence has fractured their relationship, but their bond is reforged as an old family secret-and a surrounding cache of remarkable tales - roars to the surface" - Elle, A Most Anticipated Title of the Year

"[A] stunning debut novel ... With magnetic prose and nuanced characters, Palmer has created a story where readers will be invested from page one" - Shondaland