Before We Hit the Ground

‘Love was a tightrope between freedom and control. He didn’t know how others seemed to walk it with ease’

Elom can’t make sense of love. It’s like a language he can’t speak, though he’s heard the words before.

He wants to feel understood – by his well-meaning yet misapprehending family, his self-assured partner Ben, and his boisterous friends – but he never knows the right thing to say.

How can you know yourself, in a world that’s constantly changing?

Set across Ghana and Scotland, this is an intimate portrait of one man’s search for belonging, a family’s attempt to love, and the choices that make a life.

Review

A moving exploration of family, migration, class, queerness and belonging. Tender and troubling, Selali Fiamanya’s debut shows us the ways in which a loss of language can manifest as a loss of love. This beautifully rendered novel explores what happens to our sense of self when the world around us is shifting and unstable'

-- Jessica Andrews

A deeply observant, perceptive writer

-- Joanna Cannon

A moving and masterful debut… tells an untold story that tenderly treads the lines of tradition and modernity, love and loss, courage and fear, and hope and despair. It will stay with you long after you finish it

-- JJ Bola

A poignant multigenerational story exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the complexities of queer love, set across Ghana, Glasgow and London… Fiamanya's evocative prose paints a vivid portrait of a family's love and the choices that define a life. Layered and emotionally resonant, this is a literary novel that deserves to be on your reading list.

― Glamour

A remarkable debut; quietly devastating, utterly moving and beautifully wrought

-- Jendella Benson

About the Author

Selali Fiamanya born in 1992 and raised in Glasgow, Scotland, with a couple of years spent in Accra, Ghana. He won a place on the inaugural Breakthrough Novel-Writing Course for Black Writers run by Curtis Brown Creative. He is currently undertaking his GP training in Scotland. This is his first novel.