The City of Silk is seething. The corrupt government has been ruling over the people too long and the city is becoming restless.

Then one hot evening The Leader, a head of a group of rebels, gathers his followers and tells them: 'Today, we will be making history. For ourselves, and our fellow countrymen of Sans Amen.'

And so a ragtag collection of men and boys take up arms and storm two of the most important buildings in the city: the house of power and the television studios. Together they will take back what is rightfully theirs.

Caught up in the madness is Ashes. A bookish, learned man, he has been swept up by The Leader's powerful rhetoric. But now that words have turned to action he is not so sure anymore. And trapped inside the government building with the rebels is Aspasia. A proud woman, a mother of boys, she sees much of her sons in these boys with guns in their hands and power in their eyes.

A powerful, evocative and important novel from the author of The White Woman on the Green Bicycle.

Monique Roffey was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, and educated in the UK. Since then she has worked as a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation and has held the post of Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Sussex, Chichester and Greenwich universities. She is the author of the highly acclaimed novels Sun Dog, and The White Woman on the Green Bicycle, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010, and the Encore Award 2011, and Archipelago which won the 2013 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. She has also written a memoir, With the Kisses of His Mouth. Her new novel, House of Ashes, is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Sans Amen, and tells the story of three characters, a gunman, a hostage and a boy soldier caught up in a botched coup d'état.