Small Island

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It is 1948, and England is recovering from a war. But at 21 Nevern Street, London, the conflict has only just begun. Queenie Bligh???s neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn???t know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. What else can she do? Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England as a civilian he finds himself treated very differently. It's desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door. Gilbert???s wife Hortense, too, had longed to leave Jamaica and start a better life in England. But when she joins him she is shocked to find London shabby, decrepit, and far from the golden city of her dreams. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was. About The Author Andrea Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents. She is the author of four other novels, including Every Light in the House Burning (1995), Never Far from Nowhere (1996), Fruit of the Lemon (1999), and Small Island (2005). Small Island won both the Whitbread Book of the Year Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best. Selling over a million copies worldwide, Small Island was also adapted for the small screen in a critically acclaimed series that aired on BBC and will debut on PBS's Masterpiece Classic on April 18 and 25, 2010. Levy lives in London.