Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024

A Book of the Year for the New York Times, Guardian, Telegraph, Times, NPR, Elle and Vulture*

One of Barack Obama's Favourite Reads of Summer 2024

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction Best Debut

‘Explosive’ Guardian

‘An absolute knock-out . . . Excellent’ Daily Telegraph

‘An ambitious, exciting debut. You emerge from it sweaty, pummelled and ready for your next fight’ Times

‘A knock-out . . . Headshot feels like the complete deal in a way we rarely see in debut fiction: efficient, forceful, just messy enough to be interesting and leaving space in the ring for the reader’ Observer

‘A Knockout debut novel ... Exhilarating’ Spectator

‘Compelling’ Daily Mail

‘Insightful, bold and accomplished, Headshot is also heartfelt’ Times Literary Supplement

‘This novel is about how intoxicating it is “to play a sport that requires one to look in their opponent’s eyes.” It is about pride and control and the way a fighter’s “blood and her salty tears and slick sweat make it look like she is leaking pink Kool-Aid from her nostrils.” It’s about the joy of violence, joy in the unambiguous event’ New York Times

'One of the most dazzling debuts of the year’ Marie Claire

An electrifying debut novel about the radical intimacy of physical competition

Headshot is the story of the eight best teenage girl boxers in the United States, told over the two days of a championship tournament and structured as a series of face-offs. As the girls’ pasts and futures collide, the specific joy and violence of the sport comes to life with electric energy, and a portrait emerges of the desire, envy, perfectionism, madness and sheer physical pleasure that motivates each of these young women to fight.

This is a novel about the radicalness and strangeness of being physically intimate with another human when you are