Skip content
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting
Bernard and the Cloth Monkey by Judith Bryan
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Bernard and the Cloth Monkey

A collection of rediscovered works celebrating Black Britain curated by Booker Prize-winner Bernardine Evaristo
Due to publisher restrictions, this audiobook is unavailable for purchase in your selected country.
Length 6 hours 22 minutes
Language English
Narrators Sara Powell & Bernardine Evaristo

This audiobook uses AI narration.

Weโ€™re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.

Learn more
  Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

Brought to you by Penguin.

WINNER OF THE SAGA PRIZE 1997: a literary award for trailblazing new Black British novelists

A shattering portrayal of family, guilt and unshakable bonds as a family's deepest secrets explosively unravel

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.

Dazzling and heart-breaking, Bernard and the Cloth Monkey is a searing portrait of family, a rebellion against silence and a testament to the human capacity for survival.

'A quietly outstanding work of fiction . . . an exemplary novel' Bernardine Evaristo

ยฉ Judith Bryan 1998 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Judith Bryan (Author)
Judith Bryan is a writer, playwright and academic. Her first novel Bernard and the Cloth Monkey won the 1997 Saga Prize. Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published in various anthologies including IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (edited by Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay, Penguin 2000), Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (edited by Jill Dawson and Margo Daly, Bloomsbury 2002) and Closure: Contemporary Black British Stories (edited by Jacob Ross, Peepal Tree Press 2015). Her play, Keeping Mum was produced at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, London, in 2011 (directed by Rebecca Manson Jones) for the WriteNow2 Festival of New Writing. Judith is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Hawthornden Fellow. She has taught creative writing at City Lit, Arvon, Spread the Word and to community groups. She is working on her second novel.

Bernardine Evaristo (Introducer)
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.

Judith Bryan (Author)
Judith Bryan is a writer, playwright and academic. Her first novel Bernard and the Cloth Monkey won the 1997 Saga Prize. Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published in various anthologies including IC3: The Penguin Book of New Black Writing in Britain (edited by Courttia Newland and Kadija Sesay, Penguin 2000), Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond (edited by Jill Dawson and Margo Daly, Bloomsbury 2002) and Closure: Contemporary Black British Stories (edited by Jacob Ross, Peepal Tree Press 2015). Her play, Keeping Mum was produced at Brockley Jack Studio Theatre, London, in 2011 (directed by Rebecca Manson Jones) for the WriteNow2 Festival of New Writing. Judith is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a Hawthornden Fellow. She has taught creative writing at City Lit, Arvon, Spread the Word and to community groups. She is working on her second novel.

Bernardine Evaristo (Introducer)
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.

Illustration of person sitting

Shop small, give big!

With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.

Start gifting
Phone showing make the switch message

Limited-time offer

Get two free audiobooks!

Nowโ€™s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, weโ€™ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.

Sign up today

Reviews

Bernard and the Cloth Monkey is the story of navigating adulthood with the weight of a marred and difficult childhood still straining familiar relationships . . . An important contribution to the literary landscape [Bernard and the Cloth Monkey] crosses boundaries in what it's prepared to talk about, and it does that without melodrama or sensationalism . . . It's absolutely beautifully written. I was so drawn to the prose, to the rhythms of the prose A quietly outstanding work of fiction . . . an exemplary novel Expand reviews
Give audiobooks, support local bookstores! Start gifting