BIO
Andrea Levy (1965-2019) was born in London to Jamaican migrants who came to Britain in the late 1940s, her father being one of the passengers who arrived on the Empire Windrush in 1948. She studied and worked in textile design and weaving for over ten years and only started writing when she attended Scottish poet Alison Fell’s writing classes in 1988. Influenced by her own experience of reading African American women writers such as Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, she began to write the stories she had always wanted to read about being black in Britain. For her, the historical connection between Britain and the Caribbean should be central to discussions around Britishness.
Her first three novels, Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994), Never Far from Nowhere (1996), and Fruit of the Lemon (1999), are autobiographically inspired Bildungsromane and address the everyday experiences of black families and young black women in Britain. Her fourth novel, Small Island (2004), is a more political narrative and explores the foundation of Britain’s present-day multicultural society through the experiences of her parents’ generation, Jamaicans who came to the Mother Country in the years immediately following the Second World War. The novel became a best-seller and brought Levy world-wide critical acclaim. It won a range of literary prizes, including the Orange Prize for Fiction (2004), the Whitbread Novel of Award (2004), the Orange Prize “Best of the Best” award (2005) and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book (2005). It was later adapted for television and was broadcast by the BBC in 2009. Much of her work has also been anthologised in light of the socio-political and critical nature of her writing.
Her fifth novel and final novel, The Long Song, appeared in 2010. This metafictional neo-slave narrative presenting the life story of a female slave on an early 19th-century Jamaican sugar plantation was shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize and winner of the 2011 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. In 2014 Levy published a collection of short fiction entitled Six Stories and an Essay, including ‘Uriah’s War’, which opens with an autobiographical essay about her early life. Since the author’s passing, The Long Song and Small Island have been adapted to the theatrical stage and the texts subsequently gained popularity in their new form.
Levy continued to live in London until she passed away on 14 February 2019. Her legacy continues to have prevalence in the contemporary literary scene, and her creative works remain highly studied in the field.
• http://www.andrealevy.co.uk/
Prizes and Nominations
• Arts Council Writer’s Award 1998
• Orange Prize for Fiction 2004
• Whitbread Novel Award 2004
• Whitbread Book of the Year 2004
• Orange Prize “Best of the Best” Award 2005
• Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book 2005
• British Book Awards – Literary Fiction Award 2005
• British Book Awards – Decibel Writer of the Year 2005
• Man Booker Prize 2010
• Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2011
Bibliography
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Allardice, Lisa. “The Guardian Profile: Andrea Levy.” The Guardian, 21 Jan 2005. Web. 10 June 2012.
Andermahr, Sonya. “Decolonizing cultural memory in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 55, no. 4, 2019: pp. 555-569.
Asiri, Afrah. “Collective Memory in the Diaspora as Represented in Crossing the River by Cary Phillips and Small Island by Andrea Levy.” International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, vol. 7, no. 1, 2024: pp. 16-31.
Beyer, Charlotte. “Representations of Ageing and Black British Identity in Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ and Joan Riley’s Waiting in the Twilight.” Andrea Levy. Spec. Issue of EnterText 9 (2012): pp. 105-21.
Bonnici, Thomas. “Diaspora in Two Caribbean Novels: Levy’s Small Island and Phillips’s A State of Independence.” Revista de Letras, vol. 45, no. 2 (2005): pp. 81-110.
Brophy, Sarah. “Entangled Genealogies: White Femininity on the Threshold of Change in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Contemporary Women’s Writing, vol. 4. no. 2, 2010: pp.100-113.
Carroll, Rachel. “Small island, small screen: adapting Black British fiction.” Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Jeanette Baxter and David James, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014, pp. 65-77.
Chukwumezie, Emeka. “Alienation, identity crisis and racial memory: The realities of blacks in diaspora in Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon.” International Journal of Linguistics and Literature, vol. 3, no. 1, 2014: pp. 9-18.
Clark, Alex. Rev. The Long Song, by Andrea Levy.” The Guardian 6 Feb. 2010. Web.
Collins, Corrine. ““a bit of the other”: Black edibility and white consumption in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Literature, Critique, and Empire Today, vol. 59, no. 2-3, 2022: n.p.
Courtman, Sandra. “Women Writers and the Windrush Women: A Contextual Reading of Beryl Gilroy's In Praise of Love and Children and Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Andrea Levy. Spec. issue of Entertext: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 84-105.
Dolce, María Renata. “Reinventing the World Through the Creative Word: Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” The Tapestry of the Creative Word in Anglophone Literatures, edited by Antonella Riem Natale et al., Forum, 2013: pp. 131-145.
Duboin, Corinne. “Contested Identities: Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Obsidian: Literature in the African Diaspora, vol. 12, no. 1, 2011: pp. 14-33.
Ellis, A. E. “Identity as Cultural Production in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Andrea Levy. Spec. Issue of Entertext: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 69-83.
Evelyn, Kim. “Claiming a Space in the Thought-I-Knew-You-Place: Migrant Domesticity, Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” South Atlantic Review, vol. 78, no. 3-4, 2013: pp. 129-149.
Festa, Maria. “Black and White Photographs in Caryl Phillip’s, Andrea Levy’s and Teju Cole’s Literary Texts.” CoSMo: Comparative Studies in Modernism, 2019: n.p.
Fischer, Susan A. “Andrea Levy’s London Novels.” The Swarming Streets: Twentieth-Century Literary Representations of London, edited by Lawrence Phillips, Rodopi, 2004, pp. 199-214.
Flajšarová, Pavlína. “Jamaica Revisited: Slave Narrative in Andrea Levy’s The Long Song.” Zlín Proceedings in Humanities – Volume 4, edited by Gregory Jason Bell, Nemčoková, Katarína, and Bartosz Wójik, Tomas Bata University, 2013, pp. 315-322.
Fleming, Robert. “Clean Sweep: Andrea Levy Defines What It Is To Be Black, British and a Literary Lioness.” Black Issues Book Review, vol. 7, no. 4, 2005: pp. 16-17.
Giommi, Francesca. “Centering Marginality Through Black British Narratives: Small Island and Young Rebels.” Afroeuropa, vol. 2, no. 3, 2008: n.p.
Githire, Njeri. “The Empire Bites Back: Food Politics and the Making of a Nation in Andrea Levy’s Works.” Callaloo, vol. 33, no. 3, 2010: pp. 857-873.
Graham, Shane. “Memories of Empire: The Empire Exhibition in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Hari Kunzru’s The Impressionist.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 48, no.3, 2013: pp. 441-452.
Greer, Bonnie. “Empire’s Child.” Interview with Andrea Levy. The Guardian 31 Jan. 2004.
Gui, Weihsin. “Post-heritage Narratives: Migrancy and Travelling Theory in V.S Naipaul’s The Enigma of Arrival and Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 41, 2001: pp. 73-89.
Gunning, Dave. “Unhappy Bildungsromane.” Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014: pp. 9-22.
Heckmann, Christina. Concepts of Home and Belonging in Postcolonial Literature Compared in the Novels Small Island by Andrea Levy and White Teeth by Zadie Smith. Grin Verlag, 2006.
Hickman, Christie. “Under the Skin of History.” The Independent, 6 Feb 2004, Web.
Iweala, Uzodinma. “Colonial Castoff.” Rev. of Fruit of the Lemon, by Andrea Levy. The New York Times Book Review, 11 Feb 2007.
James, Cynthia. “‘You’ll Soon Get Used to Our Language’: Language, Parody and West Indian Identity in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Anthurium, vol. 5, no. 1, 2007: n.p.
Johansen, Emily. “Muscular multiculturalism: Bodies, space, and living together in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 56, no. 4, 2015: pp. 383-398.
Jordison, Sam. “Andrea Levy’s The Long Song Gives the Silent Majority a Compelling Voice.” The Guardian, 15 Dec. 2015, Web.
Kellaway, Kate. “The Long Song by Andrea Levy: A Gift for Comic Timing.” The Observer, 7 Feb 2010. Web.
Knepper, Wendy. “Andrea Levy’s Dislocating Narratives.” Andrea Levy. Spec. issue of Entertext: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 1-13. Web.
Lang, Andrea. "Reading Race in Small Island: Discourse Deviation, Schemata and the Textual Encounter." Language and Literature, vol. 18, no. 3, 2009: pp. 316-330.
Lang, Anouk. ““Enthralling but at the same time disturbing”: Challenging the Readers of Small Island.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 44, no. 2, 2009, pp. 123-140.
Lawson Welsh, Sarah. ““A Table of Plenty.” Representations of Food and Social Order in Caribbean Writing: Some Early Accounts, Caryl Phillip’s Cambridge (1991), and Andrea Levy’s The Long Song (2010).” Entertext, vol. 10, 2013: pp. 73-89.
—. “Andrea Levy: her important body of work set out what it is to be black and British.” The Conversation, 18 Feb 2019, Web.
---. “Reading Against the Grain: Reflections on Teaching “The Long Song” Intertextuality.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Laursen, Ole Birk. “‘Telling Her a Story”: Remembering Trauma in Andrea Levy’s Writing.” Spec. issue of EnterText: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9 (2012): pp. 53-68.
—. “The Mother Country is Calling: Narrating the Second World War in Zadie Smith’s White Teeth and Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Long Shadows: The Second World War in British Literature and Film, 1943 to the Present, edited by Petra Utta-Rau, Northwestern University Press, 2016, n.p.
Levy, Andrea. “Andrea Levy Interviewed by Blake Morrison. Introduced and edited by Deirdre Osborne.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 20, no. 3, 2009: pp. 325-338.
—. “Every Inch an Englishwoman.” Interview with Jasper Gerard. The Sunday Times, 13 June 2004. Web.
—. Every Light in the House Burnin’. Headline Review, 1994.
—. Fruit of the Lemon. Headline Review, 1999.
—. “History is the Stories you Tell: Louise Doughty and Andrea Levy in Conversation.” Interview with Eva Ulrike Pirker. The European English Messenger vol. 18, no. 1 (2009): pp. 30-39.
—. Interview with Gary Younge. The Guardian, 30 Jan 2010, Web.
—. Interview with Susan Alice Fischer. Changing English, vol. 12, no. 3, 2005: pp. 361-371.
—. “‘I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the world.” Interview with Gary Younge. The Guardian, 15 Sept 2010, Web.
—. “Loose Change.” Underwords. The Hidden City. The London Booktrust London Short Story Competition Anthology, edited by Maggie Hamand, Maia, 2005, pp. 67-76.
—. “Made in Britain.” The Guardian 18 Sept. 2004.
—. Never Far from Nowhere. Headline Review, 1996.
—. The Long Song. Headline Review, 2010.
—. The Long Song [stage version], adapted by Suhayla El-Bushra. Nick Hern Books, 2021.
—. Six Stories & an Essay. Tinder Press, 2014.
—. Small Island. 2004. Headline Review, 2009.
—. Small Island [stage version], adapted by Helen Edmundson. Nick Hern Books, 2022.
—. “This is my England.” The Guardian, 19 Feb. 2000. Web.
—. Uriah’s War. Tinder Press, 2014.
Lima, Maria Helena. “Andrea Levy.” Dictionary of Literary Biography: Twenty-First-Century ‘Black’ British Writers, vol. 347, 2009: n.p.
—. “A Written Song: Andrea Levy’s Neo-Slave Narrative.” Andrea Levy. Spec. issue of EnterText: An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 135-53.
—. “‘Pivoting the Centre.’ The Fiction of Andrea Levy.” Write Black, Write British: From Post Colonial to Black British Literature, edited by Kadija Sesay, Hansib, 2005, pp. 56-85.
Lojo-Rodíguez, Laura M. “Border Experiences and Liminal Identities in Andrea Levy’s Short Stories.” Borders and Border Crossings in the Contemporary British Short Story, edited by Barbara Korte and Laura M. Lojo-Rodríguez, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 133-148.
MacPhee, Graham. “Histories of the Present: Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Postwar British Literature and Postcolonial Studies, Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
Mahadevan, Usha. “England of Andrea Levy’s Small Island: Dreams and Realities.” The Indian Review of World Literature in English, vol. 6, no. 1, 2010: pp. 1-9. Web.
Marshal, Alex. “Andrea Levy, Author Who Spoke for a Generation of Immigrants, Dies at 62.” The New York Times, 15 Feb 2019. Web.
Marquis, Claudia. “Crossing Over: Postmemory and the Postcolonial Imaginary in Andrea Levy’s Small Island and Fruit of the Lemon”. Andrea Levy. Spec. Issue of EnterText:An Interdisciplinary Humanities e-Journal, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 31-52. Web.
Mayblin, Bill. “Speaking From Memory: Thoughts and Recollections from a Life with Andrea Levy.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 54, no. 1, 2023: pp. 135-158.
McLeod, John. “July’s People: Adoption and Kinship in Andrea Levy’s Fiction.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
McMann, Mindi. ““You’re black”: Transnational perceptions of race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Americanah and Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, vol. 59, no. 2, 2018: pp. 200-212.
Medovarski, Andrea. “The Literary Legacies of Black Britain and Black Canada: A Comparative Reading of the Early Works of Andrea Levy and Austin Clarke.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Muñoz-Valdivieso, Sofía. ““This tale is of my making”: empowering voices in Andrea Levy’s The Long Song.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 52, no. 1, 2016: pp. 38-50.
—. “Cross-Genre Explorations in Black British Narratives of Slavery and Freedom: Bernadine Evaristo and Andrea Levy.” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, vol. 21, no. 1, 2022: pp. 223-245.
Murphy, Ann. “Stranger in the Empire: Language and Identity in the ‘Mother Country’”. Andrea Levy. Spec. Issue of EnterText, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 122-34.
Osborne, Deirdre. “Site and Sightlines: Staging Andrea Levy’s “Small Island”.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Öztabak-Avci, Elif. ““Playing Bad for White Ears”: A Study of the Narratee in Andrea Levy’s The Long Song.” Journal of Narrative Theory, vol. 47, no. 1, 2017: pp. 117-142.
—. “Andrea Levy’s “World-Themes” Fiction: Curating the World Wars in Small Island and “Uriah’s War.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: pp. 139-165.
Pérez Fernández, Irene. "Breaking Historical Silence: Emotional Wealth in Joan Anim-Addo's 'Daughter and His Housekeeper' and Andrea Levy' The Long Song." Callaloo, vol. 40 no. 4, 2017, pp. 113-126.
—. “Re/mapping London: Gender and Racial Relations in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Role of Female Voices in Constructing Fictional Maps of Contemporary Britain. Spec. issue of Interactions: Journal of British and American Studies, vol. 19, 2010, pp. 27-40.
—. “Representing Third Spaces, Fluid Identities and Contested Spaces in Contemporary British Literature." Atlantis, vol. 31, no.1, 2009: pp. 143-160.
—. "'From Over the Seven Seas the Empire's Sons Came': Addressing Historical Oblivion in Andrea Levy's 'Uriah's War.'" Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 53, 2017: pp. 518-529.
Perfect, Michael. ““Fold the Paper and Pass it on”: Historical Silences and the Contrapuntual in Andrea Levy’s Fiction.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 46, no. 1, 2010: pp. 31-41.
—. “Diaspora in the fiction of Andrea Levy.” Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol, 51, no. 6, 2015: pp. 752-753.
Prasad, Raekha. “Two Sides to Every Story.” The Guardian, 4 March 1999.
Pready, Jo. “The Familiar Made Strange: The Relationship between the Home and Identity in Andrea Levy’s Fiction.” Andrea Levy. Spec. Issue of EnterText, vol. 9, 2012: pp. 14-30.
Procter, James. “Andrea Levy.” British Council Literature: Writers, 2008.
Sáez, Elena Machado. “Bittersweet (Be)longing: Filling the Void of History in Andrea Levy‟s Fruit of the Lemon.” Anthurium, vol. 4, no.1 (2006): n.p. Web.
Samantrai, Ranu. “History’s Subjects: Forming the Nation in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Identity and Form in Contemporary Literature, edited by Ana María Sánchez-Arce, Routledge, 2014, n.p.
Saroukhani, Henghameh, Sarah Lawson Welsh and Micheal Perfect. “Afterlives, Aftermath: levy Studies in the Twenty-First Century.” ariel: A Review of International English Literature, vol., 53, no. 1, 2022: pp. 7-24.
---. “A Hostile Environment: The Conflicted Cosmopolitics of Andrea Levy’s “Small Island”.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Scafe, Suzanne. “Unsettling the Centre: Black British Fiction.” The History of British Women Writers. Vol. X, edited by Mary Eagleton and Emma Parker, Palgrave/Macmillan, 2015, pp. 214-228.
Scurr, Ruth. “In the mother country: Andrea Levy’s correctives to the historical record.” Times Literary Supplement, 5828, 2014: pp. 19-20.
Sharma, Swarnita, Jaya Dwivedi & Sheela Tiwari. “Realistic Approaches and Bare Realites in the Novels of Andrea Levy.” IUP Journal of English Studies, vol. 11, no. 4, 2016: pp. 17-24.
Sharma, Swarnita and Jaya Dwivedi. “Representations of Existential Nightmare in the Novels of Andrea Levy.” IUP Journal of English Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2016: pp. 33-44.
Sicher, Efram, and Linda Weinhouse. “Hybridity’s Children: Andrea Levy, Zadie Smith, and Salman Rushdie.” Under Postcolonial Eyes: Figuring the “Jew” in Contemporary British Writing, University of Nebraska Press, 2012, pp. 87-121.
Stuart, Andrea. “The Long Song, by Andrea Levy.” The Independent, 5 Feb 2010. Web.
Szczeszak-Brewer, Agata. “White Allyship and Narrative Dissonance in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Reading Contemporary Black British and African American Women Writers, edited by Jean Wyatt and Sheldon George, Routledge, 2020: pp. 215-232.
Tansley, Tangea. “How Andrea Levy Writes West.” Writing From the Shadowlands: How Cross-Cultural Literature Negotiates the Legacy of Edward Said, University of Western Australia, 2004, n.p.
Thomas, Sue. “Andrea Levy: The SS Empire Windrush and After.” Contemporary British Novel Since 2000, edited by James Acheson, Edinburgh University Press, 2017, pp. 188-198.
Tolan, Fiona. "'I Am The Narrator Of This Work': Narrative Authority In Andrea Levy's The Long Song". Andrea Levy: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by Jeannette Baxter and David James, Bloomsbury, 2014, pp. 95-97.
—. “Work, Gratitude and ‘the Good Immigrant’: Rereading Andrea Levy’s Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994) and Never Far From Nowhere (1996) after the Windrush Scandal.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Toplu, Şebnem. “Home(land) or ‘Motherland’: Translational Identities in Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon.” Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 2005: n.p. Web.
—. “Transnational Identity Mappings in Andrea Levy’s Fiction.” Growing Up Transnational Identity and Kinship in a Global Era, edited by May Friedman and Silvia Shultermandl, University of Toronto Press, 2011, pp. 160-178.
Velickovic, Verdrana. “Redressing Racist Legacies in the Melancholic Nation: Anger and Silences in Andrea Levy’s Fruit of the Lemon.” ariel: A review of International English Literature, vol. 53, no. 1-2, 2022: n.p.
Vlasta, Sandra. “Islands to Get Away From: Postcolonial Islands and Emancipation in Novels by Monica Ali, Andrea Levy and Caryl Philips.” Shipwreck and Island Motifs in Literature and the Arts, edited by Brigitte Le Jeuz and Olga Springer, Brill, 2015, pp. 233-246.
Walters, Tracey. “Black British Women’s and the Politics of Hair.” Diasporic Women’s Writing of the Black Atlantic: (En)Gendering Literature and Performance, edited by Emilia M. Durán-Almarza and Esther Álvarez-López, Routledge, 2014, pp. 60-62.
Yang, Jiaxin. “Celebrating the Ambivalent Britishness: Reading Andrea Levy’s Small Island (2004) from Bakhtin’s Carnival Theory.” British Journal of Translation, Linguistics and Literature, vol. 3, no. 3, 2023: pp. 2-12.
Younge, Gary. “After a life of striving, Andrea Levy got the acclaim she deserved.” The Guardian, 15 Feb 2019, Web.
