One of our Great Reads you may have missed in 2011.

Shortlisted for the Galaxy UK Author of the Year Award 2011.

February 2011 Book of the Month.

Winner of the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2011.

Featured on The TV Book Club on More4 on 23 Jan 2011.

Don't miss the latest novel from Andrea Levy, The author of the award winning Small Island. The Long Song is the story of July, a slave girl on a plantation in Jamaica during the last, turbulent years of Slavery. Set against the backdrop of the Baptist War of 1831 and the subsequent years when slavery was declared no more, this is an emotional and sometimes harrowing account told from the point of view of those who experienced the troubles first hand. Beautifully written, insightful and intelligent.

Featured on The TV Book Club on More4 on 23 Jan 2011.

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010.

Comparison: Andre Dubus III, Zadie Smith, Monica Ali
For more see our Author 'Like for Like' recommendation system
 

Synopsis

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize, THE LONG SONG is breathtaking, hauntingly beautiful, heartbreaking and unputdownable You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.

Reviews

'There is great skill in the way she presents characters and dialogue; she has powers of observation and an ear for language that make her books a pleasure to read’ Times Literary Supplement

'The Long Song is is told with irresistable cunning; it is captivating, mischievious and optimistic, generating new stories and plot lines throughout the tale'
Daily Telegraph

'Levy has a rare ability to channel the maelstrom of history into the most intimate of human dramas'
New Statesman

About the Author

Andrea Levy was born in London, England in 1956 to Jamaican parents. Her first three novels explored - from different perspectives - the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin' (1994), is the story of a Jamaican family living in London in the 1960s. Her second, Never Far From Nowhere (1996), is set during the 1970s and tells the story of two very different sisters living on a London council estate. In her third, Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Faith Jackson, a young black Londoner, visits Jamaica after suffering a nervous breakdown and discovers a previously unknown personal history. Small Island, her fourth novel,(2004), is set in 1948 and through the stories of both English and Jamaican characters it explores a point in England's past when the country began to change. Andrea Levy has been a judge for the Saga Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. As well as novels she has also written short stories which have been read on radio and anthologised. She has been recipient of an Arts Council Writers Award and was the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives and works in London.   Fellow novelist ANNE BERRY on ANDREA LEVY Andrea Levy’s writing springs off the page at me. It is so full of energy, colour and verve. Her novel Small Island, rightly showered with awards, about the post war arrival of Caribbean immigrants to Britain and their struggle to integrate into a closed society, is a delight from start to finish. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation