Fast by the Horns

Vivid, witty, exuberant … an electric novel about black boyhood * 80 BEST BOOKS TO TAKE ON HOLIDAY THIS SUMMER, The Times *
[The] quicksilver sense of ingenuity and battle-worn verve born of necessity to Caribbean people is at the heart of this compelling new novel by Moses McKenzie. Fast by the Horns is a fascinating depiction of Black immigrant life and Rasta boyhood in 1980s England. With the sharp and delectable music of its dialect, the book grabs you by its teeth from the first page and never quite lets go. At its best, this is an urgent novel of ideas, constantly propelled by the narrator’s wildfire voice, written almost exclusively in beautiful Rastafari vernacular … Here is a love letter to the Windrush generation who came to fight and build and labour for a nation who then left them the bleak, shelled remnants of the city after the second world war, and the scorn of their fellow citizens. Fast by the Horns is a rallying cry for these immigrants. But at its most tender, it’s also about their unsutured wounds … I only wished to stay with the captivating spirit of Jabari, in his familiar loneliness and the dark torch of his boyish questioning, for just a bit longer. – Safiya Sinclair * Guardian *
Full of lyrical energy and restless invention * The Sunday Times *
Moses McKenzie was only 21 when he wrote his vivid, lyrical debut novel, An Olive Grove in Ends (2022), about a young black Bristolian boy. Fast by the Horns goes back to 1980, to an explosive moment in Bristol’s history, when Afro-Caribbean residents of St Pauls clashed with the police. It’s narrated in a propulsive patois by 14-year-old Jabari, whose father, a revered Rastafarian community leader, has been thrown in a police cell. Raw, witty and exuberant, Fast by the Horns is nominated for this year’s Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award. * BEST PAPERBACKS OF 2025, The Times *
Moses McKenzie represents the exciting future of Black British literature and his influence is fast rippling across the South East … McKenzie’s stories resonate strongly with Kent’s growing audience of diverse readers and writers, holding up a mirror to the Black British experience that feels as poetic as it does necessary. * InsideKENT *

Moses McKenzie is of Caribbean descent and grew up in Bristol, where his first two novels are set. His debut novel, An Olive Grove in Ends, which Moses wrote at the age of twenty-one, won the prestigious Hawthornden Prize for Literature in 2023; it was also listed as a Guardian Novel of the Year 2022 and shortlisted for the Writers’ Guild Best First Novel Award 2023. Moses was named one of The Observer’s 10 Must-Read Debut Novelists of 2022, and won the inaugural Soho House Breakthrough Writer Award the same year. He is currently working on the TV adaptation of An Olive Grove in Ends. His second novel, Fast by the Horns, was published in May 2024.

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