Showing results by author "Bernardine Evaristo" in All Categories

University Lecturer Gus knows that stealing the priceless Benin mask, the Dancing Face, from a museum at the heart of the British establishment will gain an avalanche of attention. Which is exactly what he wants. But such a risky theft will also inevitably capture the attention of characters with more money, more power and fewer morals. Naively entangling his loved ones in his increasingly dangerous pursuit of righteous reparation, is Gus prepared for what it will cost him?

Lee Mitchell is a 30-year-old barrister from a working-class Caribbean background: in the cut-throat environment of the courtroom, everything is stacked against her. After she takes on the high-profile case of notorious millionaire playboy Clive Omartian - arrested along with his father and stepbrother for eye-wateringly exorbitant fraud - the line between her personal and professional life becomes dangerously blurred.

In the years just after the American revolution, London was the unlikely refuge for thousands of Black Americans who fought for liberty on the side of the British. Buckram, Georgie and William have earned their freedom and escaped their American oppressors, but on the streets of London, poverty awaits with equal cruelty.

It is the 1990s, and Gloria is living in a London psychiatric ward. She is unapologetically loud, audacious and eternally on the brink of bursting into song. After several months of uninterrupted routine, she is joined by another young Black woman - Merle - who is full of silences and fear. Unable to confide in their doctors, they agree to journal their pasts. Whispered into tape recorders and scrawled ferociously at night, the remarkable stories of their lives are revealed.

When Anita finally returns home to London after a long absence, everything has changed. Her father is dead, her mother is away and she and her sister, Beth, are alone together for the first time in years. They share a house. They share a family. They share a past. Tentatively, they reach out to one another for connection, but the house echoes with words unspoken.

Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind. One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus, and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver. She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of Black European history and literature.

In 1952, Beryl Gilroy moved from British Guiana to London. Her new life wasn't what she had expected - but her belief in the power of education resulted in a revolutionary career. Inspiring and unflinching, Gilroy's memoir Black Teacher is a rediscovered classic: not only a rare firsthand insight into the Windrush generation but a testament to how one extraordinary woman's dignity, ambition and spirit transcended her era.

Leonora Brito was a writer of exceptional stories. In Dat's Love, she soaks up the sights, sounds and colours of Cardiff to boldly explore race and history. With each electric story, Brito introduces a unique cast of characters, vibrantly elevating their everyday lives. From 59-year-old Dorothy taking up nude modelling to black aristocrat Dido Elizabeth Belle, from the assassination of JFK to what's going down at the Blue Bayou, Brito blends the surreal and the mundane to redress history and immerse the reader in a vibrantly painted world.