Keeping the House

Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2022 - ‘The UK’s most prestigious award for first-time novelists' - The Telegraph

‘Tice Cin has arrived. With a style all her own and a confidence that radiates off each page, poetry that renders settings and characters incredibly vivid. No impression will escape you.’ – Derek Owusu

‘Thrums with feeling, illustrating the London community with a sharp and confident eye. Her characters are full and sure, and traverse their world with humour, boldness and love. Hope fills these pages.’ – Caleb Azumah Nelson

Cabbages . . . The Turkish variety are prized for their enlarged leaf bud, that’s where we put the heroin . . .

There’s a stash of heroin waiting to be imported, and no one seems sure what to do with it . . . But Ayla’s a gardener, and she has a plan.

Offering a fresh and funny take on the machinery of the North London heroin trade, Keeping the House lifts the lid on a covert world thriving just beneath notice: not only in McDonald’s queues and men’s clubs, but in spotless living rooms and whispering kitchens. Spanning three generations, this is the story of the women who keep their family – and their family business – afloat, juggling everything from police surveillance to trickier questions of community, belonging and love.

Great for fans of Zadie Smith, Monica Ali and Brit Bennett.



Tice Cin is an interdisciplinary artist from north London. A London Writers Award-winner, her work has been published by Extra Teeth and Skin Deep and commissioned by places like Battersea Arts Centre and St Paul's Cathedral. An alumnus of Barbican Young Poets, she now creates digital art as part of Design Yourself – a collective based at the Barbican Centre – exploring what it means to be human when technology is changing everything. A producer and DJ, she has released an EP, Keeping the House, to accompany her debut novel of the same name.