How can you know yourself, in a world that’s constantly changing?
In his remarkable debut novel, Selali Fiamanya crafts an exquisite narrative tapestry that spans three decades and three cities—weaving together the complex threads of identity, displacement, and the profound human longing for connection. Set against the backdrop of Ghana, Scotland, and England, Before We Hit the Ground transcends conventional immigrant narratives to become something far more nuanced: an intimate cartography of the soul’s quest for belonging.
The novel’s structural brilliance lies in its polyphonic approach, with alternating chapters offering distinct familial perspectives that gradually coalesce into a devastating whole. From the opening pages, we learn of Elom’s death—a revelation that transforms the subsequent narrative into both elegy and investigation. This foreknowledge doesn’t diminish the novel’s tension but rather heightens it, as Fiamanya masterfully builds toward the inevitable with bold, economical prose punctuated by passages of startling poetic intensity.
At the heart of this multi-generational saga lies Elom—a character rendered with such compassionate precision that his absence becomes a presence haunting every page. Fiamanya’s portrayal of Elom’s sexual awakening is both frank and tender, capturing the raw vulnerability of desire alongside the complexity of navigating queerness within the constraints of cultural and religious expectations. These intimate moments are rendered with a delicate touch that never sacrifices authenticity for sentimentality.
The novel’s exploration of Blackness in Scotland—and within predominantly white spaces more broadly—offers profound insights into the persistent ache of partial belonging. Fiamanya articulates how the generational divide between immigrant parents and their children becomes exponentially more fraught when navigating entirely different cultural landscapes. The expectations placed upon Ghanaian women, portrayed with particular nuance, resonate universally with experiences of those whose homelands bear the complex legacies of colonialism.
For readers of faith, Kodzo’s spiritual journey provides a compelling meditation on religious identity as both inheritance and choice.
What elevates Before We Hit the Ground beyond its thematic richness is Fiamanya’s extraordinary prose—at once delicate, direct, brutal, baroque and precise. His writing possesses that rare quality of making readers feel seen, creating moments of recognition that transcend specific cultural experiences to touch upon universal emotional truths.
This is a novel of remarkable depth and compassion—heartbreaking yet ultimately life-affirming in its insistence that the search for belonging, however fraught, remains essential to our humanity. In charting one family’s navigation through love, loyalty, rupture, and reconciliation.
Selali Fiamanya has a voice to shape conversations about queer identity, family, and belonging and has created a compelling narrative to illuminate the most complex dimensions of human experience.
Out now, £16.99
For more information or to order the book see the publishers website here:
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