Published in 2022
207 pages
Sheena Patel is a writer and assistant director for film and TV who was born and raised in North West London. She is part of the 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE collective, has been published in a pamphlet collection, 4 BROWN GIRLS WHO WRITE (Rough Trade Books 2020), a poetry collection of the same name (FEM Press 2018) and has a poem published in the anthologies Slam! You’re Gonna Wanna Hear This chosen by Nikita Gill and She Will Soar edited by Ana Sampson. In 2022 she was chosen as one of the Observer’s Top 10 best debut novelists. I’m A Fan (Rough Trade Books) is her first book.
What is this book about?
In I’m A Fan, a single speaker uses the story of their experience in a seemingly unequal, unfaithful relationship as a prism through which to examine the complicated hold we each have on one another. With a clear and unforgiving eye, the narrator unpicks the behaviour of all involved, herself included, and makes startling connections between the power struggles at the heart of human relationships and those of the wider world, in turn offering a devastating critique of access, social media, patriarchal hetero-normative relationships, and our cultural obsession with status and how that status is conveyed.
In this incredible debut, Sheena Patel announces herself as a vital new voice in literature, capable of rendering a range of emotions and visceral experiences on the page. Sex, violence, politics, tenderness, humour—Patel handles them all with both originality and dexterity of voice.
