“Before we hit the ground by Selali Fiamanya is a literary novel about migration, grief, memory, belonging and return. The narrative opens with a Ghanaian family in Scotland packing up a house after the death of their son, Elom. Rather than using bereavement as melodrama, Fiamanya presents grief as something embedded in ordinary life routines – the wiping of kitchen tiles, packing Tupperware, preserving photographs and deciding what belongs in storage, memory and the bin. The emotional restraint is one of the novel’s greatest strengths.”