Edugyan, Esi – The Bell Bookshop

Out of the sun

Emma — Thu, 01 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

History is a construction. What happens when we bring stories consigned to the margins up to the light? How does that complicate our certainties about who we are, as individuals, as nations, as human beings?As in her fiction, the essays in Out of the Sun demonstrate Esi Edugyan’s commitment to seeking out the stories of Black lives that history has failed to record. In five wide-ranging essays, written with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the background, Edugyan reflects on her own identity and experiences. She delves into the history of Western Art and the truths about Black lives that it fails to reveal, and the ways contemporary Black artists are reclaiming and reimagining those lives. She explores and celebrates the legacy of Afrofuturism, the complex and problematic practice of racial passing, the place of ghosts and haunting in the imagination, and the fascinating relationship between Africa and Asia dating back to the 6th Century.With calm, piercing intelligence, Edugyan asks difficult questions about how we reckon with the past and imagine the future.

Washington Black

Emma — Thu, 04 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE SHORTLISTED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2020FINALIST FOR THE CARNEGIE MEDAL AND THE ROGERS WRITERS TRUST FICTION PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE 2019New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year 2018Sunday Times Paperback of the Year 2019’A masterpiece’ Attica Locke’Strong, beautiful and beguiling’ Observer’Destined to become a future classic … that rare book that should appeal to every kind of reader’ GuardianWhen two English brothers take the helm of a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington Black – an eleven-year-old field slave – finds himself selected as personal servant to one of them. The eccentric Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde is a naturalist, explorer, scientist, inventor and abolitionist, whose single-minded pursuit of the perfect aerial machine mystifies all around him.Titch’s idealistic plans are soon shattered and Washington finds himself in mortal danger. They escape together, but then Titch disappears and Washington must make his way alone, following the promise of freedom further than he ever dreamed possible.Inspired by a true story, Washington Black is an extraordinary tale of a world destroyed and made whole again.

Half Blood Blues

Emma — Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Chip told us not to go out. Said, don’t you boys tempt the devil. But it been one brawl of a night, I tell you.The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero’s bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin. Persuaded by his old friend Chip, Sid discovers there’s more to the journey than he thought when Chip shares a mysterious letter, bringing to the surface secrets buried since Hiero’s fate was settled. In Half Blood Blues, Esi Edugyan weaves the horror of betrayal, the burden of loyalty and the possibility that, if you don’t tell your story, someone else might tell it for you. And they just might tell it wrong …