She has written four previous novels, EVERY LIGHT IN THE HOUSE BURNIN', NEVER FAR FROM NOWHERE, FRUIT OF THE LEMON and SMALL ISLAND. After attending writing workshops when she was in her mid-thirties, Levy began to write the novels that she, as a young woman, had always wanted to read - entertaining novels that reflect the experiences of black Britons, which look closely and perceptively at Britain and its changing population and at the intimacies that bind British history with that of the Caribbean. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss.Īndrea Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948. All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a book they might care to consider. Perhaps, my son suggests, I might write that it is a thrilling journey through that time in the company of people who lived it. But what befalls them all is carefully chronicled upon these pages for you to peruse. My son says I must convey how the story tells also of July's mama Kitty, of the negroes that worked the plantation land, of Caroline Mortimer the white woman who owned the plantation and many more persons besides - far too many for me to list here. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was also present when slavery was declared no more. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages.

The long song novel