Sufferah, with award winning writer Alex Wheatle

In this breathtaking memoir, acclaimed writer Alex Wheatle shows how music became his salvation through a childhood marred by abuse.

Abandoned as a baby to the British care system, Alex grows up with no knowledge of his Jamaican parentage or family history. Later, he is inexorably drawn to reggae, which becomes his lifeline through disrupted teenage years, the challenges of living as a young Black man in 1980s Britain and his imprisonment for protesting against systemic racism and police brutality.

Alex's youth was portrayed in Oscar Award winning director Steve McQueen's Small Axe series. In Sufferah, he tells his own story, urgently, vividly and unsentimentally. His award-winning fiction - and this memoir - are a call to never give up hope. They remind us that words can be our sustenance, and music our heartbeat.