Bøker av Jo Hamya

A novel about a father and a daughter. About a Sicilian holiday that hangs over their relationship. About who gets to tell the story of it. About how the younger generation views the older. About whether one should or should not bite one's tongue out of love.

What happens when we stop idolising the generations above us? Stop idolising our own parents?What happens when we become frightened of the generations below us? Frightened of our own childrenWhat happens when we realise our parents' views are outdated, wrong - even harmful?What happens when we realise our children's views are naïve, wrong - even harmful?How do we deal with generational divides?And should we hold our tongues for the people we love? Should we make allowances for them? If strangers deserve unvarnished judgement, why not them?The Aeolian islands, 2010. Sophia, on the cusp of adulthood, spends a long hot summer with her father in Sicily. There she falls in love for the first time. There she works as her father's amanuensis, typing the novel he dictates, one about sex and gender divides. There, their relationship fractures.London, Summer 2020. Sophia's father, a 61-year-old novelist who 'does not feel himself to be a bad or outdated person' sits in a large theatre, surrounded by strangers, watching his daughter's first play. A play that takes that Sicilian holiday is its subject. Her father must watch his purported crimes play out in front of him.

A piercing howl of a novel about one young woman's endless quest for an apartment of her own and the aspirations and challenges faced by the millennial generation as it finds its footing in the world, from a shockingly talented debut author "A woman must have money and a room of her own." So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One's Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought, debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many. Set over the course of one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she's working as a research assistant; to a stranger's sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she's been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she'll ever be able to afford to do so.

A piercing howl of a novel and "a tart pleasure...with echoes of Zadie Smith and Sally Rooney," about one young woman's endless quest for an apartment of her own and the aspirations and challenges faced by the Millennial generation as it finds its footing in the world, from a shockingly talented debut author (Kirkus, starred review)."A woman must have money and a room of one's own." So said Virginia Woolf in her classic A Room of One's Own, but in this scrupulously observed, gorgeously wrought debut novel, Jo Hamya pushes that adage powerfully into the twenty-first century, to a generation of people living in rented rooms. What a woman needs now is an apartment of her own, the ultimate mark of financial stability, unattainable for many.Set in one year, Three Rooms follows a young woman as she moves from a rented room at Oxford, where she's working as a research assistant; to a stranger's sofa, all she can afford as a copyediting temp at a society magazine; to her childhood home, where she's been forced to return, jobless, even a room of her own out of reach. As politics shift to nationalism, the streets fill with protestors, and news drip-feeds into her phone, she struggles to live a meaningful life on her own terms, unsure if she'll ever be able to afford to do so.