Synopsis
'An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer' Mohsin Hamid
How do you mourn a person you loved who did terrible things?
After many years abroad, Harun and Roz return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their oil-baron father, Yusuf - and to reckon with their inheritance. Yusef, might be a celebrity to many, but his children know that not only has he built the family's immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest, but also that he was also involved in the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.
Harun is successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles while Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney, and both are determined to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption and are haunted - by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.
A trailblazing journey across the globe, Fierceland is a language-bending story that weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.
'The forest may be disappearing, but in Musa's words it still grows: fierce, alive, untameable' Guardian Australia
How do you mourn a person you loved who did terrible things?
After many years abroad, Harun and Roz return to Malaysian Borneo for the funeral of their oil-baron father, Yusuf - and to reckon with their inheritance. Yusef, might be a celebrity to many, but his children know that not only has he built the family's immense wealth by destroying huge tracts of rainforest, but also that he was also involved in the violent disappearance of a man who stood in his way.
Harun is successful tech entrepreneur in Los Angeles while Roz is an artist struggling to stay afloat in Sydney, and both are determined to return something their father stole from the forests of their homeland. In their quest for redemption they grapple with the legacy of power and corruption and are haunted - by the ghosts of colonialism, the ghosts of family, the ghosts of language, and the ghosts of the forest itself.
A trailblazing journey across the globe, Fierceland is a language-bending story that weaves the past and the present into an emotionally powerful family saga that plays out at a mythical scale.
'The forest may be disappearing, but in Musa's words it still grows: fierce, alive, untameable' Guardian Australia
Details
20 August 2026
9781804443675Imprint: Footnote Press
Reviews
Urgent and unforgettable
An impressive, urgent novel by a talented and courageous writer
Fierceland glows with energy and its mosaic of time and place, myth, game and imagination is reminiscent of the expansive work of Richard Powers. Fierceland is a novel of inheritances: ecological, historical, familial. Some cannot be undone. The challenge is to imagine futures within them. The forest may be disappearing, but in Musa's words it still grows: fierce, alive, untameable.
Omar Musa writes with great energy, a poetic force. Fierceland is a whimsy, time-travelling magical tale, a playful anti-colonial novel for our times . . . Do not sleep on the fierce talents of Omar Musa
