Advertisement

Small Island

Reading Time:1 minute
Why you can trust SCMP
0

Small Island by Andrea Levy Headline, HK$114

When it was first published in 2004, Small Island caused a major stir. An epic story about the Windrush generation that emigrated from Jamaica to England, it won almost every major literary prize going: the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Whitbread Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Now adapted by the BBC, the story begins in London in 1948. Hortense Roberts is elegant, well-educated and utterly unprepared for the people that await her in her adopted country. While she looks down upon her rather threadbare landlady, her landlady - a wonderful creation called Queenie Bligh - looks down upon Hortense, one of several black tenants she has been forced to take in after her husband's death in the war. Hortense's husband, Gilbert, also fought against Hitler, but receives more contempt than thanks for his courage. Levy unearths a shameful period in English history with pathos, humanity and humour. Hortense's anachronistically pedantic use of the English language is frequently hilarious: 'I have not seen Gilbert,' she tells Queenie, 'but this is perchance where he is aboding?' Beautifully written, Small Island has only grown in status.

Advertisement
Advertisement