At the Pontas Agency we're delighted to announce that Crystal Mahey-Morgan at OWN IT! has won a keenly and closely contested auction to the very special literary debut novel ‘No Place to Call Home’ by JJ Bola, for publication in June 2017 in the UK.
Crystal Mahey-Morgan says: «JJ Bola is a beautiful storyteller and this is a unique and accomplished novel made all the more exciting by the fact that it’s a debut. It is both light of touch but deep in feeling and meaning. Full of localised nuances in different times and places and masterfully woven together to simultaneously capture the essence of human heartache and human triumph. I’m confident that JJ has an exciting career as a literary fiction author ahead of him and I couldn’t be happier to be a part of his journey from the very beginning.»
Kinshasa-born (1986) and London-raised, JJ Bola is currently doing a MA in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, as a result of being one of the three recipients of the Kit de Waal Scholarship.
With great characters and seamless prose, set between London and the Congo, No Place to Call Home is a tale of belonging, identity and immigration, of hope and hopelessness, of loss –not by death, but by distance – and, by no means the least, of love. JJ Bola is already starting to shine with this very exciting literary debut.
You can also read the news as announced on The Bookseller, and click play to watch this 1-minute video of JJ Bola explaining the novel himself:
For more information, contact: Maria Cardona