Awards

• Winner of Orange Youth Panel Prize 2009
• Winner of Orange Youth Panel Prize 2009.

Overview

A searing exploration of the transatlantic slave trade from the Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other Imagine if the transatlantic slave trade was reversed. Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves . . . Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugarcane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun. But though she lives in chains, Doris dreams of escape - of returning home to England and those she loves . . .

Full Product Details

9780141031521

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Reviews

A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history * Independent on Sunday * This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes * The Times * A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic. * Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast * Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence . . . human and real * Guardian * [Blonde Roots] is a powerful gesture of fearless thematic ownership by one of the UK's most unusual and challenging writers * Independent * As with a Swiftean satire, Evaristo's novel is powerful not for its fantastical elements but for its ability to bring home the horror of historical events * Financial Times *

A pleasingly subversive, well-crafted novel of slavery and deliverance that turns conventions - and the world - upside down.Evaristo (The Emperor's Babe, 2002) poses a provocative question: What if African slavers one day showed up on the Cabbage Coast and hauled off the inhabitants to work on plantations on some distant continent? That's how the heroine, an Englishwoman named Doris, came to be the chattel of Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I (referred to as Bwana), who made his fortune in the import-export game, the notorious transatlantic slave run, before settling down to life in polite society as an absentee sugar baron, part-time husband, freelance father, retired decent human being and, it goes without saying, sacked soul. Bwana has his Simon Legree - esque moments, but then so do all the slaveowners. There are Uncle Toms and Mammies among the pale-complexioned transplants from what the Africans call the Gray Continent (because, obviously, the skies are so gray there), but Doris mostly minds her own business and pines for the fjords until she's swept up in rather elaborate events that take her on the runaway path to freedom - or so she hopes. Along the way she encounters long-lost relatives ( Mi cyant beleeve it. Me reelee cyant beleeve it, one exclaims upon seeing her). Evaristo, the English-born child of a Nigerian father, has obvious great fun toying with some of the saintly slave and dastardly master conventions of the slave-narrative genre, and if her story has some of the dire possibilities of P.D. James's near-futurist Children of Men, she favors ironic laughter to gloom - though there is gloom too ( I looked around and saw my future: haggard, hunchbacked women whose arms were streaked with the darkened, congealed skin of old burns ). Watch for the smart plays on real-world geography and history; the where-are-they-now notes at the end of the book are not to be missed either.A light entertainment on the surface, but with hidden depths; nicely written. (Kirkus Reviews)

A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic. * Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast *

'A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history' Independent on Sunday 'This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes' The Times 'Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence ... human and real' Guardian

Author Information

Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well winning the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's Style magazine. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in 2009. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband. www.bevaristo.com

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