An utterly original story with an unforgettable protagonist – Carlotta Mercedes, née Dustin Chambers – James Hannaham’s unique writing style allows the reader to enter her mind. Frequently switching from first to third person without warning, sometimes in the same sentence, while the story goes from one chaotic scene to the next it also reveals the harsh realities of the justice system and how difficult it can be to escape.

Set over one Fourth Of July weekend, Carlotta – a trans woman home on parole in New York City after spending two decades in a men’s prison – wishes to reconcile with her son, gain her family’s acceptance and try to avoid breaking her parole conditions. Though an intensely positive person, the trauma she dealt with while incarcerated is reflected on throughout. Scenes are punctuated both with sudden humour and undercurrents of reality packing enough bite to reduce you to tears.

Written in Carlotta’s AAVE vernacular, nearly all of Didn’t Nobody… takes place in a single day, specifically the first full 24 hours of its protagonist’s release: a nod, it appears, to Joyce’s Ulysses. Conversely, it sometimes resembles a retelling of The Odyssey, from the contemporary perspective of a Black, trans and formerly incarcerated person. Beyond Carlotta, too, we meet an array of odd characters as witnesses to her fight to be free, in every sense of the word.