Red Dust Road

Picador Classic

Jackie Kay author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Pan Macmillan

Published:19th Oct '17

£9.99

Available to order, but very limited on stock - if we have issues obtaining a copy, we will let you know.

Red Dust Road cover

Journeying from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping memoir, a story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.

With an introduction by the First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon.

From the moment when, as a little girl, she realizes that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay’s journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions.

In a book remarkable for its warmth and candour, she discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.

‘Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read’ – Independent

A clear-eyed, witty and unsentimental account of the push and pull between nature and nurture. Happiness shines through * Sunday Times *
Wonderful, humane . . . This is a book with resolution, determination and honesty * Scotland on Sunday *
It is Kay’s abundant wit that makes Red Dust Road such a moving, spirited work. This is a terrifically easy, evocative, and often amusing read . . . A remarkable, soul-searching journey * Sunday Herald *

  • Winner of Scottish Book Awards Book of the Year 2011 (UK)
  • Short-listed for Scottish Book Awards Non-fiction Award 2011 (UK)
  • Short-listed for National Book Awards Biography of the Year 2011 (UK)

ISBN: 9781509858392

Dimensions: 197mm x 130mm x 21mm

Weight: 269g

320 pages