A pleasingly subversive, well-crafted novel of slavery and
deliverance that turns conventions - and the world - upside
down.Evaristo (The Emperor's Babe, 2002) poses a provocative
question: What if African slavers one day showed up on the Cabbage
Coast and hauled off the inhabitants to work on plantations on some
distant continent? That's how the heroine, an Englishwoman named
Doris, came to be the chattel of Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I
(referred to as Bwana), who "made his fortune in the import-export
game, the notorious transatlantic slave run, before settling down
to life in polite society as an absentee sugar baron, part-time
husband, freelance father, retired decent human being and, it goes
without saying, sacked soul." Bwana has his Simon Legree - esque
moments, but then so do all the slaveowners. There are Uncle Toms
and Mammies among the pale-complexioned transplants from what the
Africans call the Gray Continent (because, obviously, the skies are
so gray there), but Doris mostly minds her own business and pines
for the fjords until she's swept up in rather elaborate events that
take her on the runaway path to freedom - or so she hopes. Along
the way she encounters long-lost relatives ("Mi cyant beleeve it.
Me reelee cyant beleeve it," one exclaims upon seeing her).
Evaristo, the English-born child of a Nigerian father, has obvious
great fun toying with some of the saintly slave and dastardly
master conventions of the slave-narrative genre, and if her story
has some of the dire possibilities of P.D. James's near-futurist
Children of Men, she favors ironic laughter to gloom - though there
is gloom too ("I looked around and saw my future: haggard,
hunchbacked women whose arms were streaked with the darkened,
congealed skin of old burns"). Watch for the smart plays on
real-world geography and history; the where-are-they-now notes at
the end of the book are not to be missed either.A light
entertainment on the surface, but with hidden depths; nicely
written. (Kirkus Reviews)
FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009 WINNER OF THE
ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009 FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT
LEGACY AWARD 2010 'A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so
novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a
bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be
thought of as a feminist classic.' Women's Prize for Fiction
Podcast Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris,
from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the
fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her
head and she ends up in the hold of a slave-ship sailing to the New
World . . . In this fantastically imaginative inversion of the
transatlantic slave trade - in which 'whytes' are enslaved by black
people - Bernardine Evaristo has created a thought-provoking satire
that is as accessible and readable as it is intelligent and
insightful. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago
barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the
society of today. 'A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual
history. Evaristo keep[s] her wit and anger at a spicy simmer
throughout' Daily Telegraph 'So human and real. Re-imagines past
and present with refreshing humour and intelligence' Guardian 'A
brilliant satire whose flashes of comedy make the underlying
tragedy all the more poignant' Scotland on Sunday
General
Imprint: |
Penguin Books
|
Country of origin: |
United Kingdom |
Release date: |
April 2009 |
First published: |
2010 |
Authors: |
Bernardine Evaristo
|
Dimensions: |
198 x 129 x 17mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback - B-format
|
Pages: |
272 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-14-103152-1 |
Categories: |
Books >
Fiction >
General & literary fiction >
Modern fiction
|
LSN: |
0-14-103152-2 |
Barcode: |
9780141031521 |
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