Amanda Smyth
Irish–Trinidadian Novelist
Award-winning author of four novels exploring identity, inheritance, and belonging across Ireland, Trinidad, and England. Winner of the Prix du Premier Roman Étranger and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize, her work has been internationally acclaimed and adapted for television.
About Amanda
Amanda Smyth is Irish Trinidadian, and author of four novels. Her first novel, Black Rock (Serpent's Tail) was based on the murder of her great grandfather in Trinidad in 1950s. Black Rock won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger, was nominated for an NAACP award, short listed for McKitterick Prize, Waterstones New Voices, and selected as an Oprah Winfrey Summer Read.
Selected Praise
'Amanda Smyth writes like a descendant of Jean Rhys...a born novelist'
— ALI SMITH
‘Smyth’s writing is as lushly beautiful as the landscape she describes’
— THE TIMES ‘Like Alice Walker, Smyth vividly and empathetically re-creates gender and racial tensions’
— ELLE MAGAZINEFeatured Work
Selected Novels
Black Rock
A debut inspired by true events in 1950s Trinidad.
A Kind of Eden
A story of belonging and displacement in contemporary Trinidad.
Fortune
A historical novel based on the 1928 Dome fire in Trinidad.
Look at You
A luminous novel-in-stories tracing a young narrator across Trinidad, England, and Ireland.
Get in Touch
For speaking engagements, creative writing workshops, book clubs, media enquiries, or general correspondence, please get in touch.