FICTION BOOK: Kit de Waal - BECOMING DINAH

About The Book

Seventeen-year-old Dinah needs to leave her home, the weird commune where she grew up. She needs a whole new identity, starting with how she looks, starting with shaving off her hair, her 'crowning glory'. She has to do it quickly, because she has to go now. Dinah was going to go alone and hitch a ride down south. Except, she ends up being persuaded to illegally drive a VW campervan for hundreds of miles, accompanied by a grumpy man with one leg. This wasn't the plan. But while she's driving, Dinah will be forced to confront everything that led her here, everything that will finally show her which direction to turn...

In her first YA novel, Costa-shortlisted author Kit de Waal responds to the classic Moby Dick with entirely new characters, a VW campervan, and by tearing the power away from obsessive Captain Ahab and giving it to a teenage girl who's determined to find a new life, far away from her unconventional upbringing.

About The Author

Kit de Waal is an award-winning British-Irish author and activist best known for her 2016 bestselling debut novel, My Name Is Leon. Born in Birmingham in 1960 to an Irish mother and a Caribbean father, she spent 15 years working in criminal justice, social work, and foster care before turning to creative writing later in life. Her deeply empathetic fiction and her 2022 memoir, Without Warning and Only Sometimes, frequently draw from her working-class upbringing and her professional background in the care system. Beyond her own writing, de Waal is a fierce advocate for inclusivity in publishing, having funded scholarships for working-class writers and co-founded the Primadonna Festival to amplify marginalized voices.

Genre: Young Adult / LGBTQ Fiction

Paperback, 243 Pages, 196mm x 127mm x 18mm 

ISBN 978-1-510-10570-6