Small Island by bestselling author Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for
Fiction, and the Orange Prize's 'Best of the Best', as well as the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Whitbread. It is possibly the
definitive fictional account of the experiences of the Empire Windrush
generation. 'Honest, skilful, thoughtful and important' - Guardian 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...