Published in October this year by Sparsile Press

We are all the result of an unbroken line of life forms splitting or reproducing for almost four billion years.
 
A novel about human evolution, 100,000 Birthdays explores how we’ve become who we are.  The book begins with the first birthday of the narrator, then rewinds to the first birthday of her (many times great) grandfather – a microbe called Kevin bobbing in a not-very-salty sea. Thereafter, the chapters visit subsequent ancestors: Polly the prokaryote who discovers sex, William the melancholy worm, Margaret the brazen fish who crawls out of the sea, Freddie the hungry hominid who decides to head north-west one day. The second half of the book begins with the advent of homo sapiens and follows four 17th – 18th century ancestors in Scotland, Paris, Canada, and the American colonies. Their stories are told in the context of their evolution from Kevin the microbe and their connection to the narrator. 
 
‘A stupendously funny and unsentimental journey into our origins.’
– Carolyn Jones – investigative reporter EdSource

‘A rollicking adventure through the autobiography of Life itself! This unusual and ambitious book takes an off-beat look at the evolution of life on Earth, combining memoir, scientific theory and imagined conversations between the narrator and her ancestors. It’s both a celebration of our existence and a poignant reminder that change is the only constant. Wise, funny and hugely enjoyable.’
– Victoria MacKenzie (author of For Thy Great Pain, Forgive My Little Pain)

‘A witty and brilliant ride through time and space as one of the best Scottish novelists of recent years spreads her wings.’
– Roger Hutchinson (bestselling Calum’s Road)

‘100,000 Birthdays is a major feat of the imagination – a unique and a thought-provoking read.’
– S.G.MacLean (The Bookseller of Inverness, Waterstone’s Book of the Year)

‘An audacious exploration of one life and of all life, ever. Playful, surprising, profoundly thoughtful, supremely enjoyable and often very moving, this is a memoir-cum-history-cum-novel that you will never forget.’
– Sean Lusk (The Second Sight of Zachery Cloudsley – Sunday Times book of the month and BBC Book Club pick)

‘A wonderful book, highly original, often profound, very funny and written with so much heart.’
– Doug Johnstone (The Space Between Us – dramatised on BBC)

‘Joyful, exuberant, outrageously audacious, Cynthia Rogerson’s genre-busting new work is a beautiful exercise in wonder. This is a book that ponders the wild improbability of any human existence. Not quite a memoir, not quite a novel, almost but not quite science and spanning whole eons of existence in a series of well-crafted chapters, 100,000 Birthdays will make your head spin. It will also make you laugh, which is a rare joy these days.’
– Stephen May (Life! Death! Prizes! – Costa shortlisted)