A very moving and thoughtful novel about integration in the 1950’s. Having left Ceylon partly due to their treatment by Emil’s family, Evelyn and Emil move to England, but they struggle with their relationship as the effects of the narrow-minded views of those around them take their toll on the whole family.
When the genteely impoverished and rebellious Evelyn marries the charming Emil, scion of a privileged Sinhalese family, she thinks that her dream of a life in England can now at last come true. So the family travel, with their young son Milton, from Ceylon to Tilbury Docks. But this is England in the 1950s and, no matter how hard Evelyn wishes that it would, England does not take kindly to strangers, especially families who are half black and half white. A profound and moving novel, this is the story about the search to feel at home in your own skin.
