Overview

From the bestselling and Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, Bernardine Evaristo's memoir of her own life and writing, and her manifesto on unstoppability, creativity, and activism Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker Prize win was a historic and revolutionary occasion, with Evaristo being the first Black woman and first Black British person ever to win the prize in its fifty-year history. Girl, Woman, Other was named a favorite book of the year by President Obama and Roxane Gay, was translated into thirty-five languages, and has now reached more than a million readers. Evaristo's astonishing nonfiction debut, Manifesto, is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo's life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world. With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain's first Black women's theatre company, remembers the queer relationships of her twenties, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her. She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging. She reminds us of how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. In Manifesto, Evaristo charts her theory of unstoppability, showing creative people how they too can visualize and find success in their work, ignoring the naysayers. Both unconventional memoir and inspirational text, Manifesto is a unique reminder to us all to persist in doing work we believe in, even when we might feel overlooked or discounted. Evaristo shows us how we too can follow in her footsteps, from first vision, to insistent perseverance, to eventual triumph.

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Reviews

Praise for Girl, Woman, Other: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 Named One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019 Named Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2019 Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Vogue, and many others Named an Amazon Best Book of the Year Named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards Winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction (UK) and the British Fiction Book of the Year Award Girl, Woman, Other received half a Booker Prize, but it deserves all the glory . . . A breathtaking symphony of Black women's voices, a clear-eyed survey of contemporary challenges that's nevertheless wonderfully life-affirming . . . Together, all these women present a cross-section of Britain that feels godlike in its scope and insight. --Ron Charles, Washington Post The ambition of this novel, the inventive structure and syntax, the grand scope, all make for the most absorbing book I read all year. The characters are so richly drawn, so intimately known by Evaristo, and so perfectly rendered on the page. This novel is a master class in storytelling. It is absolutely unforgettable. When I turned the final page, I felt the ache of having to leave the world Evaristo created but I also felt the excitement of getting to read the book all over again. It should have won the Booker alone. It deserves all the awards and then some. --Roxane Gay, Gay Magazine A big, busy novel with a large root system . . . Evaristo has a gift for appraising the lives of her characters with sympathy and grace while gently skewering some of their pretensions . . . Evaristo's lines are long, like Walt Whitman's or Allen Ginsberg's, and there are no periods at the ends of them. There's a looseness to her tone that gives this novel its buoyancy. Evaristo's wit helps too. --Dwight Garner, New York Times Exuberant, capacious, and engaging . . . Complex, astute, painful, funny, enlightening, and most of all enjoyable . . . An elegant and compulsively readable account of the Black women of England . . . Plumbing the many dimensions of her characters' lives, Evaristo revels in universals and singularities alike . . . The final scene triumphantly pulls together the novel's dominant themes. I laughed, I cried, I turned the last page fully satisfied. --Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe A sprawling book, but too intimate to be considered an epic . . . Each of these characters--and indeed the doting spouses, or abusive girlfriends, or foul-mouthed school chums, or lecherous preachers, or the rest of the human parade--feels specific, and vibrant, and not quite complete, insofar as the best fictional characters remain as elusive and surprising as real people are. This is a feat; the whole book is . . . Evaristo is a gifted portraitist, and you marvel at both the people she conjures and the unexpected way she reveals them to you . . . Yes, prizes are silly. But sometimes they're deserved. --Rumaan Alam, New Republic [Girl, Woman, Other is] about almost everything. Politics, parenthood, sexuality, racism and colorism, immigration, domestic violence, infidelity, friendship, love, all the ways we misunderstand each other, the way life surprises us with its unfolding. This is a partial list . . . Bernardine is here to turn on the lights, give you your money's worth, and let you decide for yourself. --Marion Winik, Minneapolis Star-Tribune Deserves every accolade, and more . . . A creative and technical marvel--a sprawling, unpunctuated, and improbably joyful account of twelve interconnected characters in modern-day Britain . . . A book so bursting with wit, empathy, and insight, its clear-eyed reflections on race and feminism hardly ever feel like polemics; there's too much pure, vivid life on every page. --Entertainment Weekly Girl, Woman, Other changed my thinking. --Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement Not just one of my favorite books of this year, but one of the most insightful books I've ever had the pleasure of reading . . . Inspired. --Nicola Sturgeon, Guardian Magnificent . . . As she creates a space for immigrants and the children of immigrants to tell their stories, Evaristo explores a range of topics both contemporary and timeless. There is room for everyone to find a home in this extraordinary novel. Beautiful and necessary. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Evaristo beguiles with her exceptional depictions of a range of experiences of Black British women . . . A stunning powerhouse of vibrant characters and heartbreaks. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Courageous . . . Hearing from mothers and their children, teachers and their students across generations, readers might expect that they'll get to see just what these characters can't know about one another, but they won't imagine the dazzling specificities nor the unspooling dramas; they will be entertained, educated, and riveted. --Booklist (starred review) Girl, Woman, Other, the intermingling stories of generations of Black British women told in a gloriously rich and readable free verse, will surely be seen as a landmark in British fiction. --Guardian In Girl, Woman, Other, Evaristo adopts an even bigger canvas, with a sparkling new novel of interconnected stories . . . In Evaristo's eighth book she continues to expand and enhance our literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read. --New Statesman Brims with vitality . . . The form [Evaristo] chooses here is breezily dismissive of convention. The flow of this prose-poetry hybrid feels absolutely right, with the pace and layout of words matched to the lilt and intonation of the characters' voices . . . She captures the shared experience that make us, as she puts it in her dedication, members of the human family. --Financial Times The voices of Black women come to the fore in a swirl of interrelated stories that cover the past century of British life. Wide-ranging, witty and wise, it's a book that does new things with the novel form. --Sunday Times This masterful novel is a choral love song to Black womanhood. --Elle (UK)

Praise for Manifesto: Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Time, Kirkus Reviews, and Literary Hub Part memoir and part meditation on determination, creativity, and activism . . . A beautiful ode to determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest writers. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) What a fascinating life Evaristo has led . . . An inspiring yet unassuming memoir from a woman of indomitable creative energy. --Booklist (starred review) In lithe prose, [Evaristo] tackles her complicated relationship with sexuality, reminisces on hustling her early books into readers' hands and finding 'a room of my own' in her writing later in life, and dispenses advice on cultivating creativity and intergenerational consciousness . . . Readers will find much to ruminate over in this meditation on the power of art and persistence. --Publishers Weekly Fans of Evaristo's work will discover in Manifesto the passionate core of this unstoppable force in 21st-century literature . . . Evaristo's personal manifesto, summarized at the end of this remarkable book, is ripe with inspiration for those who come after her, her advice timeless and applicable to readers at every stage of their artistic endeavors . . . A Booker Prize-winning British author's soulful memoir captures the essence of her creativity and offers inspirational guidance to emerging writers. --Shelf Awareness The most striking feature of this moving and enjoyable book is [Evaristo's] fearless openness. When the publishing world looked closed to her she prised it open with her daring fiction. Sunday Times A rallying cry . . . Manifesto combines the personal with the practical to powerful effect . . . Unconventional as it may be, the format works: the autobiographical parts of the book serve as vivid lessons about the power of change, growth and self-confidence . . . Entertaining as well as instructive. --Guardian Lively and important . . . [Evaristo] is unfailingly generous in delineating how she became herself . . . She is determined not to pull up the ladder behind her and is also, often wickedly funny . . . How I wish when I was 18 that someone--if not necessarily my school--had thrust Manifesto into my hands. --Evening Standard Shimmers with unfailing self-belief and a strong vein of humility . . . Manifesto's subtitle is 'On Never Giving Up.' A better advert for this maxim you could not find. --Susie Boyt, Spectator Praise for Girl, Woman, Other: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 Named One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019 Named Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2019 Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Vogue, and many others Named an Amazon Best Book of the Year Named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards Winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction (UK) and the British Fiction Book of the Year Award Girl, Woman, Other received half a Booker Prize, but it deserves all the glory . . . A breathtaking symphony of Black women's voices, a clear-eyed survey of contemporary challenges that's nevertheless wonderfully life-affirming . . . Together, all these women present a cross-section of Britain that feels godlike in its scope and insight. --Ron Charles, Washington Post The ambition of this novel, the inventive structure and syntax, the grand scope, all make for the most absorbing book I read all year. The characters are so richly drawn, so intimately known by Evaristo, and so perfectly rendered on the page. This novel is a master class in storytelling. It is absolutely unforgettable. When I turned the final page, I felt the ache of having to leave the world Evaristo created but I also felt the excitement of getting to read the book all over again. It should have won the Booker alone. It deserves all the awards and then some. --Roxane Gay, Gay Magazine A big, busy novel with a large root system . . . Evaristo has a gift for appraising the lives of her characters with sympathy and grace while gently skewering some of their pretensions . . . Evaristo's lines are long, like Walt Whitman's or Allen Ginsberg's, and there are no periods at the ends of them. There's a looseness to her tone that gives this novel its buoyancy. Evaristo's wit helps too. --Dwight Garner, New York Times Exuberant, capacious, and engaging . . . Complex, astute, painful, funny, enlightening, and most of all enjoyable . . . An elegant and compulsively readable account of the Black women of England . . . Plumbing the many dimensions of her characters' lives, Evaristo revels in universals and singularities alike . . . The final scene triumphantly pulls together the novel's dominant themes. I laughed, I cried, I turned the last page fully satisfied. --Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe A sprawling book, but too intimate to be considered an epic . . . Each of these characters--and indeed the doting spouses, or abusive girlfriends, or foul-mouthed school chums, or lecherous preachers, or the rest of the human parade--feels specific, and vibrant, and not quite complete, insofar as the best fictional characters remain as elusive and surprising as real people are. This is a feat; the whole book is . . . Evaristo is a gifted portraitist, and you marvel at both the people she conjures and the unexpected way she reveals them to you . . . Yes, prizes are silly. But sometimes they're deserved. --Rumaan Alam, New Republic [Girl, Woman, Other is] about almost everything. Politics, parenthood, sexuality, racism and colorism, immigration, domestic violence, infidelity, friendship, love, all the ways we misunderstand each other, the way life surprises us with its unfolding. This is a partial list . . . Bernardine is here to turn on the lights, give you your money's worth, and let you decide for yourself. --Marion Winik, Minneapolis Star-Tribune Deserves every accolade, and more . . . A creative and technical marvel--a sprawling, unpunctuated, and improbably joyful account of twelve interconnected characters in modern-day Britain . . . A book so bursting with wit, empathy, and insight, its clear-eyed reflections on race and feminism hardly ever feel like polemics; there's too much pure, vivid life on every page. --Entertainment Weekly Girl, Woman, Other changed my thinking. --Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement Not just one of my favorite books of this year, but one of the most insightful books I've ever had the pleasure of reading . . . Inspired. --Nicola Sturgeon, Guardian Magnificent . . . As she creates a space for immigrants and the children of immigrants to tell their stories, Evaristo explores a range of topics both contemporary and timeless. There is room for everyone to find a home in this extraordinary novel. Beautiful and necessary. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Evaristo beguiles with her exceptional depictions of a range of experiences of Black British women . . . A stunning powerhouse of vibrant characters and heartbreaks. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Courageous . . . Hearing from mothers and their children, teachers and their students across generations, readers might expect that they'll get to see just what these characters can't know about one another, but they won't imagine the dazzling specificities nor the unspooling dramas; they will be entertained, educated, and riveted. --Booklist (starred review) Girl, Woman, Other, the intermingling stories of generations of Black British women told in a gloriously rich and readable free verse, will surely be seen as a landmark in British fiction. --Guardian In Girl, Woman, Other, Evaristo adopts an even bigger canvas, with a sparkling new novel of interconnected stories . . . In Evaristo's eighth book she continues to expand and enhance our literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read. --New Statesman Brims with vitality . . . The form [Evaristo] chooses here is breezily dismissive of convention. The flow of this prose-poetry hybrid feels absolutely right, with the pace and layout of words matched to the lilt and intonation of the characters' voices . . . She captures the shared experience that make us, as she puts it in her dedication, members of the human family. --Financial Times The voices of Black women come to the fore in a swirl of interrelated stories that cover the past century of British life. Wide-ranging, witty and wise, it's a book that does new things with the novel form. --Sunday Times This masterful novel is a choral love song to Black womanhood. --Elle (UK)

Praise for Manifesto: In lithe prose, [Evaristo] tackles her complicated relationship with sexuality, reminisces on hustling her early books into readers' hands and finding 'a room of my own' in her writing later in life, and dispenses advice on cultivating creativity and intergenerational consciousness . . . Readers will find much to ruminate over in this meditation on the power of art and persistence. --Publishers WeeklyPraise for Girl, Woman, Other: NATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019 Named One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019 Named Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2019 Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Vogue, and many others Named an Amazon Best Book of the Year Named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards Winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction (UK) and the British Fiction Book of the Year Award Girl, Woman, Other received half a Booker Prize, but it deserves all the glory . . . A breathtaking symphony of Black women's voices, a clear-eyed survey of contemporary challenges that's nevertheless wonderfully life-affirming . . . Together, all these women present a cross-section of Britain that feels godlike in its scope and insight. --Ron Charles, Washington Post The ambition of this novel, the inventive structure and syntax, the grand scope, all make for the most absorbing book I read all year. The characters are so richly drawn, so intimately known by Evaristo, and so perfectly rendered on the page. This novel is a master class in storytelling. It is absolutely unforgettable. When I turned the final page, I felt the ache of having to leave the world Evaristo created but I also felt the excitement of getting to read the book all over again. It should have won the Booker alone. It deserves all the awards and then some. --Roxane Gay, Gay Magazine A big, busy novel with a large root system . . . Evaristo has a gift for appraising the lives of her characters with sympathy and grace while gently skewering some of their pretensions . . . Evaristo's lines are long, like Walt Whitman's or Allen Ginsberg's, and there are no periods at the ends of them. There's a looseness to her tone that gives this novel its buoyancy. Evaristo's wit helps too. --Dwight Garner, New York Times Exuberant, capacious, and engaging . . . Complex, astute, painful, funny, enlightening, and most of all enjoyable . . . An elegant and compulsively readable account of the Black women of England . . . Plumbing the many dimensions of her characters' lives, Evaristo revels in universals and singularities alike . . . The final scene triumphantly pulls together the novel's dominant themes. I laughed, I cried, I turned the last page fully satisfied. --Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe A sprawling book, but too intimate to be considered an epic . . . Each of these characters--and indeed the doting spouses, or abusive girlfriends, or foul-mouthed school chums, or lecherous preachers, or the rest of the human parade--feels specific, and vibrant, and not quite complete, insofar as the best fictional characters remain as elusive and surprising as real people are. This is a feat; the whole book is . . . Evaristo is a gifted portraitist, and you marvel at both the people she conjures and the unexpected way she reveals them to you . . . Yes, prizes are silly. But sometimes they're deserved. --Rumaan Alam, New Republic [Girl, Woman, Other is] about almost everything. Politics, parenthood, sexuality, racism and colorism, immigration, domestic violence, infidelity, friendship, love, all the ways we misunderstand each other, the way life surprises us with its unfolding. This is a partial list . . . Bernardine is here to turn on the lights, give you your money's worth, and let you decide for yourself. --Marion Winik, Minneapolis Star-Tribune Deserves every accolade, and more . . . A creative and technical marvel--a sprawling, unpunctuated, and improbably joyful account of twelve interconnected characters in modern-day Britain . . . A book so bursting with wit, empathy, and insight, its clear-eyed reflections on race and feminism hardly ever feel like polemics; there's too much pure, vivid life on every page. --Entertainment Weekly Girl, Woman, Other changed my thinking. --Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement Not just one of my favorite books of this year, but one of the most insightful books I've ever had the pleasure of reading . . . Inspired. --Nicola Sturgeon, Guardian Magnificent . . . As she creates a space for immigrants and the children of immigrants to tell their stories, Evaristo explores a range of topics both contemporary and timeless. There is room for everyone to find a home in this extraordinary novel. Beautiful and necessary. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review) Evaristo beguiles with her exceptional depictions of a range of experiences of Black British women . . . A stunning powerhouse of vibrant characters and heartbreaks. --Publishers Weekly (starred review) Courageous . . . Hearing from mothers and their children, teachers and their students across generations, readers might expect that they'll get to see just what these characters can't know about one another, but they won't imagine the dazzling specificities nor the unspooling dramas; they will be entertained, educated, and riveted. --Booklist (starred review) Girl, Woman, Other, the intermingling stories of generations of Black British women told in a gloriously rich and readable free verse, will surely be seen as a landmark in British fiction. --Guardian In Girl, Woman, Other, Evaristo adopts an even bigger canvas, with a sparkling new novel of interconnected stories . . . In Evaristo's eighth book she continues to expand and enhance our literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this is the writer to read. --New Statesman Brims with vitality . . . The form [Evaristo] chooses here is breezily dismissive of convention. The flow of this prose-poetry hybrid feels absolutely right, with the pace and layout of words matched to the lilt and intonation of the characters' voices . . . She captures the shared experience that make us, as she puts it in her dedication, members of the human family. --Financial Times The voices of Black women come to the fore in a swirl of interrelated stories that cover the past century of British life. Wide-ranging, witty and wise, it's a book that does new things with the novel form. --Sunday Times This masterful novel is a choral love song to Black womanhood. --Elle (UK)

Author Information

Bernardine Evaristo is the 2019 winner of the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, which was a national bestseller and a winner and finalist for many awards including the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award. Evaristo is the author of seven other books that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her writing spans verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and drama. Evaristo is President of the Royal Society of Literature, Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, and an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. She received an OBE in 2020, and lives in London with her husband. Her most recent book is Manifesto: On Never Giving Up.@BernardineEvari www.bevaristo.com

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