AA Alum Sandy Rompotiyoke wins the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize with her novel 'Hallowed Land'

AA Alum Sandy Rompotiyoke is the winner of the #Merky Books New Writers’ Prize with her novel Hallowed Land. #Merky Books is an award-winning imprint launched in 2018 by Stormzy and Penguin Random House UK with a clear ambition to publish books that will own – and change – the mainstream. Their aim is to publish the stories that will allow a new generation of writers and readers across the UK to see themselves represented regularly within the pages of a book.

Sandy's winning entry, Hallowed Land, is a lyrical, intergenerational novel following three Thai women of Chinese descent across Southern Thailand and London. After the death of her grandmother, Tawan returns home and confronts the histories embedded in land, ritual and female labour that she once tried to leave behind. Weaving myth, memory and political residue, the novel explores grief, inheritance and the restless condition of belonging between homelands. As ancestral voices emerge and time begins to fracture, Hallowed Land asks what it means to carry both tenderness and ruin, and whether exile can ever truly sever one’s bond to place. The novel is scheduled to be published in Spring 2028.

Image credit: Anoud Radaideh and Penguin Random House UK