*Foyles Fiction Book of the Year 2021*  Natasha Brown’s debut is a slim, razor-sharp novel with not a spare sentence, artfully melding first-person narration with a poet’s touch and the influence of cultural texts—the story of a young Black British woman striving to hold herself together as the world threatens to break her apart.

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022 Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going. The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? Assembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life.

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• ISBN: 9780241992661
• Number of pages: 112
• Weight: 120g
• Dimensions: 196 x 124 x 18 mm