Showing results by author "Bernardine Evaristo" in All Categories

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the 20th century to the teens of the 21st, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of 12 characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope....

Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he's lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather - but he is also secretly lovers with his great childhood friend, Morris. When his marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?

Londinium, AD 211. Zuleika is a modern girl living in an ancient world. She's a back-alley firecracker, a scruffy Nubian babe with tangled hair and bare feet - and she's just been married off to a fat old Roman. Life as a teenage bride is no joke but Zeeks is a born survivor. She knows this city like the back of her hand: its slave girls and drag queens, its shining villas and rotting slums. She knows how to get by. Until one day she catches the eye of the most powerful man on earth, the Roman Emperor, and her trouble really starts....

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.

One for the Trouble: Book Slam, Volume One is the first release from the UK’s premier literary event. Eighteen Book Slam alumni, from household names like Irvine Welsh and William Boyd to newcomers like Kate Tempest and Sophie Woolley, were approached to take a song title for inspiration for a new short story or poem. Some took this literally (Jon McGregor’s moving reimagining of A House’s 'Endless Art', for example); others suggestively....

Bernardine Evaristo's 2019 Booker win - the first by a Black woman - was a revolutionary moment both for British culture and for her. After three decades as a trailblazing writer, teacher and activist, she moved from the margins to centre stage, taking her place in the spotlight at last. Her journey was a long one, but she made it, and she made history. Manifesto is Bernardine Evaristo's intimate and inspirational no-holds-barred account of how she did it, refusing to let any barriers stand in her way.

Dillibe was the second Black boy to study at Eton - joining in 1965 - and the first to complete his education there. Written at just 21, this is a deeply personal, revelatory account of the racism he endured during his time as a student at the prestigious institution. He tells in vivid detail of his own background as the son of a Nigerian judge at the International Court of Justice at the Hague, of his arrival at the school, of the curriculum, of his reception by other boys (and masters) and of his punishments.

In Britons Through Negro Spectacles Merriman-Labor takes us on a joyous, intoxicating tour of London at the turn of the 20th century. Slyly subverting the colonial gaze usually placed on Africa, he introduces us to the citizens, culture and customs of Britain with a mischievous glint in his eye. This incredible work of social commentary feels a century ahead of its time and provides unique insights into the intersection between empire, race and community at this important moment in history.

Lee Mitchell is a 30-year-old barrister from a working-class Caribbean background: in the cut-throat environment of the courtroom, everything is stacked against her. After she takes on the high-profile case of notorious millionaire playboy Clive Omartian - arrested along with his father and stepbrother for eye-wateringly exorbitant fraud - the line between her personal and professional life becomes dangerously blurred.

It is the 1920s in the Trinidadian capital, and Haynes' world has been upended. His mother has passed away, and his carefully mapped-out future of gleaming opportunity has disappeared with her. Unable to afford his former life, he finds himself moving into Minty Alley - a bustling barrack yard teeming with energy and a spectacular cast of characters. In this sliver of West Indian working-class society, outrageous love affairs and passionate arguments are a daily fixture and Haynes begins to slip from curious observer to the heart of the action.

Amma ist frischgebackene Dramatikerin und hat hart gearbeitet, um als schwarze Frau endlich im Mainstream der Theaterszene anzukommen. Ihre Freundin Shirley fühlt sich als Lehrerin an einer heruntergekommenen Schule ausgebrannt. Shirleys ehemalige Schülerin Carole ist eine erfolgreiche Investmentbankerin. So unterschiedlich die Lebensentwürfe der Frauen auch sind, jede ist auf der Suche nach etwas: Anerkennung, Liebe, ein Zuhause... Jede Generation hat für etwas gekämpft, das für die nächste schon selbstverständlich ist.

Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind. One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus, and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver. She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of Black European history and literature.

It's a hot summer afternoon. Tension is in the air. A gang of youths on bikes gathers outside a chip shop. A teenage boy is stabbed and left bleeding on the street. The boy's mother wonders how this could have happened to her son. She is full of questions, but when the answers lie so close to home, are they really what she wants to hear?

Love is not a singular concept. In this collection, seven award-winning authors explore seven concepts of love: from philautia (self-love) to agape (love for humanity) and from storge (a natural affection for family) to mania (a frenzied, obsessive love).

In 1952, Beryl Gilroy moved from British Guiana to London. Her new life wasn't what she had expected - but her belief in the power of education resulted in a revolutionary career. Inspiring and unflinching, Gilroy's memoir Black Teacher is a rediscovered classic: not only a rare firsthand insight into the Windrush generation but a testament to how one extraordinary woman's dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.

In the years just after the American revolution, London was the unlikely refuge for thousands of Black Americans who fought for liberty on the side of the British. Buckram, Georgie and William have earned their freedom and escaped their American oppressors, but on the streets of London, poverty awaits with equal cruelty.

It is the 1990s, and Gloria is living in a London psychiatric ward. She is unapologetically loud, audacious and eternally on the brink of bursting into song. After several months of uninterrupted routine, she is joined by another young Black woman - Merle - who is full of silences and fear. Unable to confide in their doctors, they agree to journal their pasts. Whispered into tape recorders and scrawled ferociously at night, the remarkable stories of their lives are revealed.

L'autrice del fortunato "Ragazza, donna, altro", racconta qui la schiavitù in un modo nuovo, diverso. Immagina un mondo in cui la tratta atlantica degli schiavi viene ribaltata lungo la linea del colore: sono i neri ad aver fondato un impero coloniale a partire dal Regno Unito di Grande Ambossa, e i bianchi a essere razziati dall'Europa e trasportati come schiavi al di là del mare, nelle Isole del Giappone Occidentale. Ripercorriamo la storia di Doris alternando la contemporaneità della protagonista e il suo personale viaggio verso la libertà.

Nach über 30 Jahren kreativen Widerstands als Autorin und Aktivistin hat Bernardine Evaristo es geschafft, Geschichte zu schreiben. Als erste Schwarze Frau erhielt sie 2019 den Booker Prize und steht nun im Mittelpunkt der Literaturwelt. "Manifesto" ist ein Memoire über ihre Hingabe und Beharrlichkeit, Geschichten von Menschen zu erzählen, die meist unerzählt bleiben. Es ist das bewegende Zeugnis ihres einzigartigen Lebensweges.

Amryl Johnson came to England from Trinidad when she was 11. As an adult in 1983, ready for a homecoming, she embarks on a journey through the Caribbean searching for home, searching for herself. Landing in Trinidad as carnival begins, she instantly surrenders to the collective, pulsating rhythm of the crowd, euphoric in her total freedom. This elation is shattered when she finds the house where she was born has been destroyed. She cannot escape - nor does she want to - from the inheritance of colonialism.