Lote

Jacaranda Twenty in 2020

By: Shola von Reinhold

Narrated by: Adjoa Andoh, Zawe Ashton, Aurora Burghart

Part of the groundbreaking #TwentyIn2020 programme for Black British writing, Lote is an exquisite, genre-bending novel set in Scotland.

Lush and frothy, incisive and witty, Shola von Reinhold’s decadent queer literary debut immerses readers in the pursuit of aesthetics and beauty, while interrogating the removal and obscurement of Black figures from history.

Solitary Mathilda has long been enamored with the ‘Bright Young Things’ of the 20s, and throughout her life, her attempts at reinvention have mirrored their extravagance and artfulness. After discovering a photograph of the forgotten Black modernist poet Hermia Druitt, who ran in the same circles as the Bright Young Things that she adores, Mathilda becomes transfixed and resolves to learn as much as she can about the mysterious figure. Her search brings her to a peculiar artists’ residency in Dun, a small European town Hermia was known to have lived in during the 30s. The artists’ residency throws her deeper into a lattice of secrets and secret societies that takes hold of her aesthetic imagination, but will she be able to break the thrall of her Transfixions?

From champagne theft and Black Modernisms, to art sabotage, alchemy and lotus-eating proto-luxury communist cults, Mathilda’s journey through modes of aesthetic expression guides her to truth and the convoluted ways it is made and obscured.

#TwentyIn2020 is Jacaranda Books' historical, groundbreaking initiative to publish 20 Black British writers in one year. The works include fiction, nonfiction and poetry, with the aim of normalising the presence of diverse literature by talented Black writers in the UK.

©2020 Shola von Rheinhold (P)2019 Audible, Ltd

An antidote to the international cis-het

The book is about long-forgotten secret societies, weird philosophers, being queer and black in a place that isn't, quiet resistance to the international cis-het, living above your means.

It's esoteric, it's got beautiful prose, it's black, it's queer, it's aesthetic bliss, and the narrators do a wonderful job elevating the text even higher with their brilliant performances.