Critics' Opinion:
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Published Jan 2009
288 pages
Genre: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Speculative, Alt. History
Publication Information
A provocative novel that upends the history of the transatlantic slave trade, reversing and reexamining notions of savagery and civilization, as it follows a young woman's journey to freedom.
Award-winning writer Bernardine Evaristo's novel Blonde Roots asks: What if the history of the transatlantic slave trade had been reversed and Africans had enslaved Europeans? How would that have changed the ways that people justified their inhuman behavior? And how would it inform our cultural attitudes and the insidious racism that still lingers—and sometimes festers—today?
We see this tragicomic world turned upside down through the eyes of Doris, an Englishwoman who is kidnapped one day while playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields near their home. She is subsequently enslaved and taken to the New World, as well as to the imperial center of Great Ambossa. She movingly recounts experiences of tremendous hardship and dreams of the people she’s left behind, all while journeying toward an escape into freedom.
"Starred Review. This difficult and provocative book is a conversation sparker." - Publishers Weekly.
"A light entertainment on the surface, but with hidden depths; nicely written." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Evaristo captures and reverses the social dynamics that cause people to adapt and to protect their culture under the oppressive and dehumanizing conditions of slavery." - Booklist.
"Starred Review. The wide variety of characters, the examinations of image and identity, and Doris's own adventures may make this a popular selection for book groups." - Library Journal.
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Photo: Jennie Scott
Bernardine Evaristo is the 2019 winner of the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, which was a national bestseller and a winner and finalist for many awards including the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award. Evaristo is the author of seven other books that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her writing spans verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and drama. Evaristo is President of the Royal Society of Literature, Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, and an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. She received an OBE in 2020, and lives in London with her husband. Her most recent book is Manifesto: On Never Giving Up.
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