Client details

I.J.Kay was born in Suffolk in 1961.  She lives in Bristol and in The Gambia, West Africa, but favours a boat on which she writes and travels the waterways of England.  In 2006 she took an MA (Creative Writing) with distinction from Bath Spa University. MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON, published by Jonathan Cape in Feburary 2012, is her debut novel.  She is currently working on a second novel, provisionally called THE STAYING OF CHRISTIE CRAWFORD.

PRAISE FOR MOUNTAINS OF THE MOON (2011):

"Kay has created a narrative voice that is compelling, sympathetic and always interesting... [she] writes with clarity and ease; the sheer lucidity is irresistible...  Few 350-page, first-person novels - even fewer contemporary British novels - are unputdownable. This is one of them." -The Irish Times.  For the full article click here.

“She has a perfect instinct for where to be elliptical and where precise. If the reader becomes disoriented, it is always intentional, mirroring the narrator's own physical and mental disorientation... Mountains of the Moon does everything that novels can do, and does them in a very original way.” -The Guardian

“In spite of the desperate subject matter it is above all a triumphant, uplifting expression of an individual's capacity to transcend the brutality and ugliness of everyday life and create something unique and magnificent... It's a wonderful voice: funny and fragile, innocent, knowing, tender and tough. I have never encountered another like it... There is nothing simplistic about this bold, unsettling, uplifting novel. Read it. Then read it again.” –The Observer

"Mountains of the Moon is a riveting novel, both disturbing and entertaining, with twisted low-life characters rivalling any created by Martin Amis or Nicola Barker." -The Specator Book Club