Sometimes – rarely, it has to be said – a young talent blazes into view like a comet.

Sometimes – rarely, it has to be said – a young talent blazes into view like a comet. Such is Safiya Sinclair, a poet born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, whose unruly first book, Cannibal (Picador, £10.99; Tablet price £9.89), a series of meditations upon what it feels like, viscerally, to have been misnamed, misused and misunderstood as a nation, an island, a people, is fizzily alive with intelligence, anger, dismay, sarcasm and humour. How to summarise this wild, uproarious, wayward fist-shaker of a book, this near- crazed, jittery outblurting of such talent? She flings words around with wondrous confidence and pizzazz.

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