Small Island: A Novel

Small Island is an international bestseller. It won the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best, The Whitbread Novel Award, The Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. It has now been adapted for the screen as a co-production of the BBC and Masterpiece/WGBH Boston. Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmers daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrants life. Born in 1956 to Jamaican parents, Andrea Levy is the author of three previous novels and has received a British Arts Council Writers Award in addition to the Orange Prize and Whitbread distinctions. She lives works in London. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize A Publishers Weekly Top 10 Novel of the Year - Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmers daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve. Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossing taken and passage lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers--in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrants life. Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction Winner of the Whitbread Book of the Year Award Winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize A perfectly crafted tale of crossed lives and oceans. Big themes--abandonment, survival, racial awareness, forgiveness--are not always weighty enough to chart a smooth course over constant shifts in voice, time, and place. Levys outstanding talent is her ability to control these upheavals. From Kingston to London to Calcutta, Levy deftly directs her story with twin reins of violence and humor.--San Francisco Chronicle Levys greatest achievement in Small Island is to convey how English racism was all the more heartbreaking for its colonial victims because it involved the crushing of their ideals . . .Small Island is too thoughtful a novel to promise its characters a happy ending, but it is generous enough to offer them hope.--Fatema Ahmed, The New York Times Book Review. A perfectly crafted tale of crossed lives and oceans. Big themes--abandonment, survival, racial awareness, forgiveness--are not always weighty enough to chart a smooth course over constant shifts in voice, time, and place.

Author: Andrea Levy

Language: English

Edition: First Edition, New Edition

Binding: Paperback

Pages: 448

Publisher: Picador

Publication Date: 2010-03-30