Becoming Dinah

Kit de Waal

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In her first YA novel, Costa-shortlisted Kit de Waal responds to classic MOBY DICK by tearing the power away from obsessive Captain Ahab and giving it to a teenage girl.

Dinah's whole world is upside down, dead things and angry men and cuts all over her head that are beginning to sting....

Seventeen-year-old Dinah needs to leave her home, the weird commune where she grew up. She needs a whole new identity, starting with how she looks, starting with shaving off her hair, her 'crowning glory'. She has to do it quickly, because she has to go now.

Dinah was going to go alone and hitch a ride down south. Except, she ends up being persuaded to illegally drive a VW campervan for hundreds of miles, accompanied by a grumpy man with one leg. This wasn't the plan.

But while she's driving, Dinah will be forced to confront everything that led her here, everything that will finally show her which direction to turn...

In her first YA novel, Costa-shortlisted author Kit de Waal responds to the classic MOBY DICK with entirely new characters, a VW campervan, and by tearing the power away from obsessive Captain Ahab and giving it to a teenage girl who's determined to find a new life, far away from her unconventional upbringing.

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Praise for Becoming Dinah

  • Becoming Dinah is a story with ancient resonance that's also fresh and defiantly original. I fell utterly in love with Dinah. I felt her pain and wanted the best for her from the start. A proper adventure wrapped around a tender, beautifully told story of loss, resilience and discovery. What a beautiful book. - Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

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Kit de Waal

Kit de Waal

Kit de Waal is the author of MY NAME IS LEON, which was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and won the Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, THE TRICK TO TIME, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a short story collection, SUPPORTING CAST, and a memoir, WITHOUT WARNING & ONLY SOMETIMES, which was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. She is also editor of the COMMON PEOPLE anthology. MY NAME IS LEON was recently adapted as a film for BBC Two.

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