My Name is Yip: Shortlisted for the Betty Trask Prize

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Yip survived but he was mute, not a sound left his mouth from the day he was born, he was also extremely tiny in stature, and didn’t have a single hair on his body.

Set in the early 19th century in the American mid-West, the novel is narrated by Yip Tolroy, who is looking back at his life, writing with three fingers on a slate. One October night in the small town of Heron's Creek, Georgia, Yip Tolroy is born, the cord snaked around his fragile neck, his skin a deathly white. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. And, as Yip and Dud's odyssey takes them further into the unknown - via travelling shows, escaped slaves and the greed of gold-hungry men - the pull of home only gets stronger.Once you get used to it, it reads very easily though - it is very consistently maintained throughout the novel. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. By the time Yip reaches his fifteenth year he has not spoken a word - he is mute, friendless, an outcast. I love the compelling narrator, somehow a cross between Charles Dickens's David Copperfield and Charles Portis's Mattie Ross. Yip Tolroy is one of the most unusual characters, in both senses of the word, that I have come across.

The witting is humorous, self-deprecating and captures the essence of the early and difficult life in this country. Mute but eloquent,Yip comes thrillingly into our midst to unfurl his singular and singing book of revelations.I can't recommend it enough' Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson's Beetle'Singular and singing' Sebastian Barry, author of Days Without End'Magnificent' Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers***A New Statesman 'most anticipated' debut 2022***The year is 1815. It's got the diction (King James Bible minus all grammar), it's got a frame story of an older, wiser narrator looking back on his youth, and it's filthy - as in grit, grime, grease and legions of unwashed bodies. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Yip Tolroy, being mute, may not have a voice in the conventional sense of the word, but he makes himself heard in the very essence of his character, in this wonderful debut novel, that in itself yells to be heard!