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Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo
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Blonde Roots

From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Length 7 hours 15 minutes
Language English
Narrators Charlotte Beaumont & Ben Arogundade

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FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

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


LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009
WINNER OF THE ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009
FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD 2010

ยฉ Bernadine Evaristo 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Bernardine Evaristo, MBE, is the award-winning author of eight books of fiction and verse fiction that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her novel Girl, Woman, Other made her the first black woman to win the Booker Prize in 2019, as well winning the Fiction Book of the Year Award at the British Book Awards in 2020, where she also won Author of the Year, and the Indie Book Award. She also became the first woman of colour and black British writer to reach No.1 in the UK paperback fiction chart in 2020. Her writing spans reviews, essays, drama and radio, and she has edited and guest-edited national publications, including The Sunday Time's Style magazine. Her other awards and honours include an MBE in 2009. Bernardine is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University, London, and President of the Royal Society of Literature. She lives in London with her husband.
www.bevaristo.com

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Reviews

A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes 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. Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence . . . human and real [Blonde Roots] is a powerful gesture of fearless thematic ownership by one of the UK's most unusual and challenging writers As with a Swiftean satire, Evaristo's novel is powerful not for its fantastical elements but for its ability to bring home the horror of historical events Expand reviews
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