Blonde Roots: From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other

Evaristo, Bernardine

£8.99

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.

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Publish Date: 30/04/2009

Description

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009
WINNER OF THE ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009
FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD 2010

‘A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid’s Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.’ Women’s Prize for Fiction Podcast

Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris, from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the hold of a slave-ship sailing to the New World . . .

In this fantastically imaginative inversion of the transatlantic slave trade – in which ‘whytes’ are enslaved by black people – Bernardine Evaristo has created a thought-provoking satire that is as accessible and readable as it is intelligent and insightful. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the society of today.

‘A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual history. Evaristo keep[s] her wit and anger at a spicy simmer throughout’ Daily Telegraph

‘So human and real. Re-imagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence’ Guardian

‘A brilliant satire whose flashes of comedy make the underlying tragedy all the more poignant’ Scotland on Sunday

Additional information

Weight 193 g
Dimensions 198 × 129 × 17 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

260

Language

English

Edition

1st paperback ed

Dewey

823.92 (edition:22)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K