Having Spent Life Seeking

By: Kae Tempest

Narrated by: Kae Tempest

Brought to you by Penguin.

Rothko Taylor is back in their hometown after fifteen years away. Can life turn out differently this time?

Rothko Taylor has washed up with the tide, back in their hometown, Edgecliff. Fifteen years since they left it behind.

The past is accelerating towards them: the skateboard kids on the high street that remind them of their teenage years, the splintered benches looking out to sea, where their mum Meg clutched her cans. The nice bit of town, where their dad Ezra tried and failed to build a happy home. And Dionne's block. Beautiful, extraordinary Dionne, the only person who had ever looked at them and seen what was there.

Back then, overwhelmed and full of fear, they sank beneath the surface into chaos. But they made it out alive. And this time, Rothko is determined that things will be different.

A decade since Kae Tempest's last novel, Having Spent Life Seeking is about family and forgiveness; redemption and atonement; desire and abandon; selfhood and community. The things we seek when we are hiding, and what finds us, if we can let ourselves be seen.

'If books can still change the world, this one most likely will' COLUM MCCANN

'A wonderful, moving and enlightening state-of-Britain novel' IRVINE WELSH

'A hallelujah of a book. A scorching story of love, change, homecoming and forgiveness' DAWN FRENCH

'Kae Tempest at his finest' ANTHONY SHAPLAND

'Unboundedly beautiful' MICHAEL PEDERSEN

© Kae Tempest 2026 (P) Penguin Audio 2026

Critic reviews

A master-craftsman of deep feeling and linguistic intimacy (Max Porter)

A wonderful, moving and enlightening state-of-Britain novel stuffed with memorable characters, depicting an individual’s struggle for self-realization in a society punitive to those who refuse to stand in its prescribed boxes (Irvine Welsh)

Unboundedly beautiful. Having Spent Life Seeking rings the heart like a bell (Michael Pedersen)

Having Spent Life Seeking is Kae at his finest, his uncanny skill of focussing on detail, noticing and observing ordinariness – all while allowing slippery truths to surface in this gentle, volatile book (Anthony Shapland)

A hallelujah of a book. A scorching story of love, change, homecoming and forgiveness. Kae at his beautiful, brilliant, best (Dawn French)

Kae Tempest brings into the literary realm that which others choose to leave outside. This is a remarkable act of literary bravery. If books can still change the world, this one most likely will. Narrative-driven, stuffed with soul, brimming with brokenness, rife with repair, this is a book for our splintered times. In Tempest's hands, redemption travels faster than the speed of light (Colum McCann)