1
of
1
Red Dust Road
Series: Picador Collection
Ratings/reviews counts are updated frequently.
Check link for latest rating. ( 2,628 ratings, 334 reviews)
Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still
learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Summary
Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3199
Unit price
/
Unavailable
AVAILABLE WITH SUPPLIER
Ships from our Auckland warehouse within 4-6 weeks
Found a better price? Request a price match
Red Dust Road
$3199
Unit price
/
Unavailable
Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This memoir will resonate with readers interested in adoption stories, multicultural identity, and personal journeys of self-discovery. Fans of literary memoirs with poetic flair and emotionally genuine storytelling will appreciate Kayโs narrative.
Latest News
Romance for Spring - Groundbreaking!
Lizzy is sharing her top picks for Spring reads in the romance and romantasy genre...
The โFourth Wingโ graphic novel covers have been revealed
The covers for โFourth Wing, The Graphic Novel: Volume Oneโ have officially been revealed, with...
Books about Bookshops (across almost every genre)
Books about books, bookshops, and booksellers - it's my favourite thing. Here's a small selection...
What the Book Hero team is excited for
With so many pre-orders coming in the last few months of the year, we asked...
Meet Reverie Puzzles: Puzzles Made for Book Lovers
Reverie Puzzles have arrived at Book Hero and they might just be the perfect puzzles...
See moreAn adoption memoir and soul-searching journey by former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay.
'What makes us who we are? My adoption is a story that has happened to me. I couldn't make it up.'
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
still learning, it may not be perfect - your
feedback is welcome!
Description
CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF PICADOR BOOKS
You think adoption is a story which has an end. But the point about it is that it has no end. It keeps changing its ending.
From the moment when, as a little girl, she realises that her skin is a different colour from that of her beloved mum and dad, to the tracing and finding of her birth parents, her Highland mother and Nigerian father, Jackie Kay's journey in Red Dust Road is one of unexpected twists, turns and deep emotions. In a book remarkable for its warmth and candour, Kay discovers that inheritance is about much more than genes: that we are shaped by songs as much as by cells, and that what triumphs, ultimately, is love.
Taking the reader from Glasgow to Lagos and beyond, Red Dust Road is a heart-stopping story of parents and siblings, friends and strangers, belonging and beliefs, biology and destiny.
'Like the best memoirs, this one is written with novelistic and poetic flair. Red Dust Road is a fantastic, probing and heart-warming read' - Independent
Part of the Picador Collection, a new series showcasing the best of modern literature.
Series: Picador Collection
View all-
A Little Life
Celebrating 50 years of Picador Books Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2015 Shortlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction 2016 Winner of Fiction of the Year at the British Book Awards 2016 Finalist for the National Book Awards 2015 The million-copy bestseller, A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara is an immensely powerful and heartbreaking novel of brotherly love and...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Road
The post-apocalyptic modern classic with an introduction by novelist John Banville. In a burned-out America, a father and his young son walk under a darkened sky, heading slowly for the coast. They have no idea what, if anything, awaits them there. The landscape is destroyed, nothing moves save the ash on the wind and cruel, lawless men stalk the roadside,...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
American Psycho
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis Celebrating 50 years of Picador Books. I like to dissect girls. Did you know I'm utterly insane? Patrick Bateman has it all: good looks, youth, charm, a job on Wall Street, and reservations at every new restaurant in town. He is also a psychopath. A man addicted to his superficial, perfect life, he pulls...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 4-6 weeks -
No Country for Old Men
Adapted by the Coen Brothers into an Academy Award-winning film, No Country for Old Men is a dark and suspenseful novel from Cormac McCarthy, author of The Road. Llewelyn Moss, hunting antelope near the Rio Grande, stumbles upon a transaction gone horribly wrong. Finding bullet-ridden bodies, several kilos of heroin, and a caseload of cash, he faces a choice -...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
20% off
All the Pretty Horses
John Grady Cole is the last bewildered survivor of long generations of Texas ranchers. Finding himself cut off from the only life he has ever wanted, he sets out for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins. Befriending a third boy on the way, they find a country beyond their imagining: barren and beautiful, rugged yet cruelly civilized; a place where...Paperback$2000Usually:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Blood Meridian
CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF PICADOR BOOKS The wrath of God lies sleeping. It was hid a million years before men were and only men have power to wake it. Hell ain't half full. Set in the anarchic world opened up by America's westward expansion, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic and potent account of the barbarous violence that...Paperback$2299Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Station Eleven
CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF PICADOR BOOKS Now an HBO Max original TV series The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty. One snowy night in...Paperback$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
CELEBRATING FIFTY YEARS OF PICADOR BOOKS If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self - himself - he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it. In this extraordinary book, Dr. Oliver Sacks recounts the stories of...Paperback$2500Elsewhere:$3500Unit price /UnavailableBackorderShips mid September -
18% off
Cities of the Plain
In Cities of the Plain, the concluding volume of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed Border Trilogy, two men grapple with a vanishing way of life amidst a rapidly changing world. John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, whose stories began in All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing, now find themselves facing the tumultuous currents of the 1950s American Southwest. Bound by their...Paperback$1800Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
The Crossing
The Crossing forms the second part of Cormac McCarthy's critically acclaimed Border Trilogy, a story that began with All the Pretty Horses and concludes with Cities of the Plain. Set on the south-western ranches in the years before the Second World War, Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing follows the fortunes of sixteen-year-old Billy Parham and his younger brother Boyd. Fascinated by...Paperback$2200Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
17% off
Outer Dark
A dark, nihilistic tale, Cormac McCarthy's second novel Outer Dark sees brother and sister wander separately through a countryside scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers. In an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the beginning of the twentieth century, a woman named Rinthy bears her brother's child. The brother, Culla, abandons the baby in the woods, and tells Rinthy...Paperback$1900Elsewhere:$2499Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
18% off
Them: Adventures with Extremists
Funny and compulsively readable - Louis Theroux What if a tiny, shadowy elite rule the world from a secret room? In Them: Adventures with Extremists Jon Ronson sets out to find this room, with the help of the extremists - Islamic fundamentalists, neo-Nazis, Ku Klux Klansmen - that believe in it. Along the way, he is chased by men in...Paperback$2300Usually:$2799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Praised for its warmth and candour, Red Dust Road is celebrated as a clear-eyed, witty, and unsentimental meditation on nature and nurture. Reviews highlight Jackie Kay's abundant wit and novelistic, poetic style, calling it a moving, spirited, and often amusing read. The book is described as humane, honest, and resolute, with happiness shining through its soul-searching journey.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781529077230
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 17 February 2022
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Picador
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 20.0mm
Width: 130.0mm
Height: 197.0mm
Weight: 224g
Pages: 320
About the Author
Jackie Kay was born in Edinburgh. She is the third modern Makar, the Scottish poet laureate. A poet, novelist and writer of short stories, she has enjoyed great acclaim for her work for both adults and children. Her first novel, Trumpet, won the Authors' Club First Novel Award and the Guardian Fiction Prize. She is also the author of three collections of stories with Picador, Why Don't You Stop Talking, Wish I Was Here, and Reality, Reality; two poetry collections, Fiere and Bantam; and her memoir, Red Dust Road. She is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and lives in Manchester, where she is currently Chancellor of the University of Salford.
Also by Jackie Kay
View all-
Bessie Smith
'The most vivid evocation of Bessie Smith I have ever read' - Ian Carr, BBC Music '[Bessie Smith] showed me the air and taught me how to fill it ... she's the reason I started singing, really' - Janis Joplin Bessie Smith: singer, icon, pioneer. Bessie Smith was born in Tennessee in 1894. Orphaned by the age of nine, she...PaperbackSold Out
More from Biography & Memoir
View all-
This Angry Pen of Mine
This Angry Pen of Mine by Layne Staley invites you to dive into the untold creative world of Layne Staley, the legendary voice behind Alice in Chains. This extraordinary collection showcases his handwritten lyrics, deeply personal poetry, stunning original artwork, rare photos, fan tributes, and so much more. Step into the world of Layne Staley like never before. For the...Hardback$7299Elsewhere:$8999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Famesick
Chronicling the tumultuous decade between the premiere of Girls to her 2021 shotgunย wedding (minus the baby, because she has no uterus), Lena Dunham takes us through herย journey with her trademark mix of humor, unsparing honesty, and keen eye for detail. We peek behind the scenes - of her work, her family, her relationships, and her battle to reclaim her body...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Pre-orderSwan Song
Beautiful. Beloved. Hunted. The extraordinary life and death of Diana, as told by her brother, Charles โ available to pre-order now. โWhen asked, โWhat was it like, growing up with Diana?โ, my first thought is always, But I donโt know what it was like not to grow up with herโฆโ In September 1997, Charles Spencer stood in Westminster Abbey before...Hardback$5499Elsewhere:$6500Unit price /UnavailableOut 23 Sep 2026Pre-order -
Dogs, Boys and Other Things I've Cried About
From the social media superstar behind @SimonSits, Isabel Klee--known for her heartwarming tales of dog rescue--comes an utterly winning memoir about a twentysomething woman's search for true love in New York City and the dogs who helped her find it. A Jersey girl by birth, Isabel Klee had always wanted to live in New York City. At age 20, she...Paperback$3299Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Signed CopyStakes
Read our interview with author Noelle McCarthy! A darkly funny, sparkling follow-up to the authorโs bestselling memoirย Grand. You have to invite him in. You have to want the vampireโs badness in the house with you. Growing up in Catholic Ireland, Noelle McCarthy is captivated by Bram Stokerโsย Dracula. The vampire is a risk-free fantasy, a suave alternative to the fraught realities...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$4000Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseBuilt for This
Raised among strong women, butcher's benches, and hard ideas about what men are meant to be, Brad Poulter grows up knowing he's different long before he has the words for it. But in late '90s small-town New Zealand, 'different' isn't discussed, it's managed. Joining the Royal New Zealand Navy offers escape, certainty, and belonging. The rules are clear, the uniform...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Even the Good Girls Will Cry
Thanks to a thrown beer bottle and a fan letter to a P.O. box, Melissa Auf der Maur's first band scored an opening slot for the Smashing Pumpkins in her bohemian home town, Montreal. Sensing Melissa's talent, Billy Corgan recommended her to Courtney Love. Whisked from her local scene, Melissa joined Hole just after the deaths of Kurt Cobain and...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3999Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseAn Ocean and a Day
An utterly riveting, moving and poignant memoir of grief and loss that will speak to anyone who's ever lost someone they love. An Ocean and a Day is Hannah Richell's personal account of losing her husband, Matt, in a surfing accident on Tamarama beach in 2014. It is the story of the grief journey she travelled over the first two...Paperback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseA Place to Stand
A Place to Stand by Clare Ward is a profound memoir that delves into the life of a country doctor living and working in the Hokianga Harbour area in the far north of Aotearoa New Zealand. This region is sparsely populated and poses numerous health challenges. This thoughtful account details Clareโs thirty-year career, highlighting the people she works with and...Hardback$3199Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
New ReleaseRule of Lies
Written with all the pace and energy of a John Grisham novel โฆ An incredible true story and a great read! BILL BROWDER, author of Red Notice and Freezing Order An American lawyerโs brilliant, propulsive story of witnessing and playing a part in the transformation of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin. A true tale of fascinating personalities, criminal intrigue, harrowing...Paperback$2999Elsewhere:$3799Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Rory
Theย New York Timesย bestseller The #1ย Irish Timesย bestseller The definitive biography of Rory McIlroy, the most important, popular and confounding player of the post-Tiger era. Rory McIlroy contains multitudes. The child of a working-class family from a small town in a war-torn homeland now commutes to work in his own private jet and counts billionaires as confidants. He can overwhelm a golf...Paperback$3699Elsewhere:$4199Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today -
Te Kaikaukau | The Swimmer
Novelist, memoirist and playwright Witi Ihimaera โ author of Pounamu, Pounamu and The Whale Rider โ decided, at the age of eighty, to dive back into the water and spend a year full-time at Te Wฤnanga Takiura, immersing himself in his own language, in te reo Mฤori. This book tells the story of this kaikaukau, this swimmer, and his year...Paperback$3500Elsewhere:$4500Unit price /UnavailableIn StockShips today
Why buy from us?
Book Hero is not a chain store or big box retailer. We're an independent 100% NZ-owned business on a mission to help more Kiwis rediscover a love of books and reading!
Service & Delivery
Our warehouse in Auckland holds over 100,000 books, toys, board games and puzzles in-stock so you're not waiting for your order to arrive from overseas.
Auckland Bookstore
We're primarily an online store, but for your convenience you can pick up your order for free from our bookstore, which is right next door to our warehouse in Hobsonville.
Our Gifting Service
Books make wonderful thoughtful gifts and we're here to help with gift-wrapping and cards. We can even send your gift directly to your loved one.
