Small Island

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Small Island

By: Andrea Levy

Narrated by: Andrea Levy

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About this listen

Small Island by best-selling author Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for Fiction, as well as many other awards, including the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Whitbread. Now a major BBC drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomie Harris, its enduring appeal will captivate fans of Maya Angelou and Zadie Smith.

It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh's neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn't know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do?

Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It's desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door.

Gilbert's wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was....

Caribbean Creators

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Literary Fiction

Veteran Creators

England

Funny

Marriage

Heartfelt

Inspiring

Thought-Provoking

Witty

Tear-jerking

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Critic reviews

"Wonderful...seamless...a magnificent achievement." (Linda Grant)
'A great read...honest, skilful, thoughtful and important.' ( Guardian)

"A cracking good read.... I think what appealed to me most was the passion and anger in the writing all the way through, yet it was always leavened with a particularly wry sort of humour - the sort that, tho' you find yourself smiling, you at the same time realise you almost shouldn't be." (Margaret Forster)

Most relevant

Although this is fiction it held the truth about the attitudes and experience of people who came to help the mother country. It also highlighted the racist attitudes of a few British people after the war had ended. Men who were once good enough to fight for England were no longer welcome in peace time. It also makes you think about what is happening today with the Windrush generation who came to England as British and after a life time of service are told to leave.