Historical Fiction · WarmJamaican migrants Hortense and Gilbert find lodgings in the London home of an English couple in 1948
Small Island
by Andrea Levy
Two Jamaican migrants and an English couple end up under one roof in post-war London
Hortense and Gilbert travel from Jamaica to post-war Britain and find lodgings in the London home of the English couple Queenie and Bernard. Each of the four narrates part of the story, which is set mainly in 1948 and is told out of chronological order, with backstory from Jamaica and the war. The book explores identity, displacement and race relations. It was adapted by the BBC in 2009 and for the National Theatre in 2019.
More about this book
Who
Hortense, Gilbert, Queenie and Bernard, who each narrate.
World
London in 1948, with Jamaica and the Second World War in the backstory.
What makes it different
Four voices tell it and the order of events is not chronological.
Feel
Warm, with humor and hard edges. It won the Whitbread Book of the Year, the Orange Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Small IslandWikipedia