Small Island
Will be published approx. on 2. July 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
544 pages
978-1-0354-4757-2 (ISBN)
Description
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize 'Best of the Best', the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Whitbread Award
With an introduction by Monique Roffey
________
I did not dare to dream that it would one day be I that would go to England. It would one day be I that would sail on a ship as big as a world and feel the sun's heat on my face gradually change from roasting to caressing. But there was I! Standing at the door of a house in London and ringing the bell. Pushing my finger to hear the ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling. Oh, Celia Langley, where were you then with your big ideas and your nose in the air? Could you see me? Could you see me there in London? Hortense Roberts married with a gold ring and a wedding dress in a trunk. Mrs Joseph. Mrs Gilbert Joseph. What you think of that, Celia Langley? There was I in England ringing the door bell on one of the tallest houses I had ever seen.
________
'A great read . . . honest, skilful, thoughtful and important'
Guardian
'An engrossing read - slyly funny, passionately angry and wholly involving'
Daily Mail
'Gives us a new urgent take on our past'
Vogue
With an introduction by Monique Roffey
________
I did not dare to dream that it would one day be I that would go to England. It would one day be I that would sail on a ship as big as a world and feel the sun's heat on my face gradually change from roasting to caressing. But there was I! Standing at the door of a house in London and ringing the bell. Pushing my finger to hear the ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling. Oh, Celia Langley, where were you then with your big ideas and your nose in the air? Could you see me? Could you see me there in London? Hortense Roberts married with a gold ring and a wedding dress in a trunk. Mrs Joseph. Mrs Gilbert Joseph. What you think of that, Celia Langley? There was I in England ringing the door bell on one of the tallest houses I had ever seen.
________
'A great read . . . honest, skilful, thoughtful and important'
Guardian
'An engrossing read - slyly funny, passionately angry and wholly involving'
Daily Mail
'Gives us a new urgent take on our past'
Vogue
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Headline Publishing Group
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
380 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-0354-4757-2 (9781035447572)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
After she passed away on the 14th of February 2019, the Bookseller wrote: 'Andrea Levy will be remembered as a novelist who broke out of the confines assigned to her by prejudice to become a both a forerunner of Black British excellence and a great novelist by any standards.'
Born in England to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948, Andrea Levy wrote the novels that she had always wanted to read as a young woman, engaging books that reflect the experiences of black Britons and at the intimacies that bind British history with that of the Caribbean. She was described by BBC News as 'a writer who tackled important social issues . . . her writing . . . witty, humane and often moving, and full of richly drawn characters'.
She was the author of six books, including SMALL ISLAND, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Whitbread book of the Year, and was adapted for TV and for the stage, by the National Theatre. It was selected by the BBC as one of its '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'. Her most recent novel, THE LONG SONG, won the Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was adapted for TV by the BBC.
Born in England to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948, Andrea Levy wrote the novels that she had always wanted to read as a young woman, engaging books that reflect the experiences of black Britons and at the intimacies that bind British history with that of the Caribbean. She was described by BBC News as 'a writer who tackled important social issues . . . her writing . . . witty, humane and often moving, and full of richly drawn characters'.
She was the author of six books, including SMALL ISLAND, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Whitbread book of the Year, and was adapted for TV and for the stage, by the National Theatre. It was selected by the BBC as one of its '100 Novels That Shaped Our World'. Her most recent novel, THE LONG SONG, won the Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and was adapted for TV by the BBC.