A STYLIST and RADIO TIMES Most Anticipated Book for 2026
There 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.
Praise for Winter Animals, winner of the 2025 Betty Trask Prize
‘Lewis is definitely a new talent to watch’ MARIE CLAIRE
‘Dreamlike, piercing’ Cecile Pin, author of WANDERING SOULS
‘Lewis is superbly talented’ Katherine Rundell, author of SUPER-INFINITE and THE GOLDEN MOLE
‘Atmospheric as hell, beautiful and delightfully intelligent’ Jenny Mustard, author of OKAY DAYS
‘Exhilarating and fabulous, I raced through it’ Priscilla Morris, author of BLACK BUTTERFLIES
‘A debut full of ideas. I have the sense that this is the first of many new worlds‘ TELEGRAPH
There 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.
Praise for Winter Animals, winner of the 2025 Betty Trask Prize
‘Lewis is definitely a new talent to watch’ MARIE CLAIRE
‘Dreamlike, piercing’ Cecile Pin, author of WANDERING SOULS
‘Lewis is superbly talented’ Katherine Rundell, author of SUPER-INFINITE and THE GOLDEN MOLE
‘Atmospheric as hell, beautiful and delightfully intelligent’ Jenny Mustard, author of OKAY DAYS
‘Exhilarating and fabulous, I raced through it’ Priscilla Morris, author of BLACK BUTTERFLIES
‘A debut full of ideas. I have the sense that this is the first of many new worlds‘ TELEGRAPH
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Reviews
In Suckerfish, every tender detail of a love between a child and parent comes alive. Ashani Lewis explores the knottiness of care and ambition with great empathy.
I savoured the prose. At once foreboding and meditative, each segment of Suckerfish is a window into a fully realised world: a Russian doll of narrative. The archetypal working, absent, vindictive mother that society is so scared of is fully realised here in complex glory. Lewis deftly manoeuvres between the horror and beauty of loving the mother terrifying, the mother critical, the mother magnificent: the one who hurts and loves you, and yet loves to hurt you.