Having arrived from Accra on the fictional Caribbean island of Fumaz – caught between revolutionary ideals and a suffocating embargo – the young agronomist and guitarist Oswald Kole Osabutey Jr., known to everyone as Yunior, is given a crucial task: to save the plantations of the famous sweet rice – the heart of the local economy – from crisis. Soon his fate becomes intertwined with that of Emelina, the great-granddaughter of the inventor of this unique crop, Diego Soñada Santos, who, having grown up in the United States, returns to the land of her ancestors to inherit their historic plantations. A modern fairy tale woven from music, science, family myths, cuisine and resilience. With prose that has a musical rhythm, Nii Ayikwei Parkes explores the price of belonging and the invisible legacy that links Africa to the Americas. A novel with a sweet yet profound flavour, where agriculture becomes a metaphor for resilience and music the universal language for rediscovering oneself.

Nii Ayikwei Parkes (1974) is an Anglo-Ghanaian poet, novelist and publisher. Born in the United Kingdom and raised in Ghana, his writing blends West African oral tradition with contemporary literature. His debut novel, Tail of the Blue Bird (2009), a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, won the Prix Baudelaire and the Prix Laure Bataillon in France. His works also include the novel Azúcar (2023) and the poetry collections The Makings of You and The Geez. A co-founder of the independent London-based publishing house flipped eye publishing, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2024.