BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

Small Island

by Andrea Levy · 2004

Literary Fiction · ranked #150 in category

Winner · The Women's Prize for Fiction, 2004Winner · The Costa Book of the Year, 2004Winner · The Whitbread Book of the Year, 2004

Two couples — the Jamaican migrants Gilbert and Hortense, newly arrived in London in 1948, and the English couple Queenie and Bernard — share a house in the years after the Second World War. Levy's Orange Prize-winning novel asks what Britain promised the Windrush generation and what it actually gave them, exploring the gap between the coloniser's idea of England and its daily reality.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
2004 · 2000s
Author
Andrea Levy
Standing
Essential Read

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