โLevyโs beautifully wrought novel is a window into 1948 England . . . A bristling, funny, angry tale of love and sacrifice.โ โEntertainment Weekly
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The Basis for the PBS Masterpiece Classic
Winner of the Orange Prize and Whitbread Book of the Year
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Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmerโs daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.
Told in these four voices,ย Small Islandย is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriersโin short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrantโs life.
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โAndrea Levy gives us a new, urgent take on our past.โ โVogue
โA perfectly crafted tale of crossed lives and oceans . . . Happily, the hype is warrantedโSmall Islandย is a triumph.โ โSan Francisco Chronicle
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โLevy tells a good story, and she tells it wellโusing narrative voices across time and space as she revisits the conventions of the historical novel and imagines the hopes and pains of the immigrantโs saga anew.โ โThe Washington Post