Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

A world in which the slaves are the masters and the masters are the slaves.

From the Booker winner for Girl, woman, others, a brilliant satire on slavery.

Welcome to a world upside down. One day, Doris is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the meadow behind her house in England. Suddenly, someone lunges at her, puts a sack over her head, and Doris ends up in the hold of a slave ship sailing to the New World.

In this fantastic and imaginative twist on the transatlantic slave trade – in which white people are enslaved by black people – Bernardine Evaristo invites us to reflect with a satire that is as accessible and easy to read as it is intelligent and insightful. blonde roots It brings us almost uncomfortably close to the shackles, lamentations and other barbarities of slavery, raising very timely questions about today’s society.

Bernardine Evaristo, Anglo-Nigerian, is the author of eight books and many other produced and published works spanning all genres: novel, poetry, verse fiction, short story, essay, literary criticism, theater and radio drama. Her work is based on her interest in the African diaspora. Bernardine is a long-time activist for inclusion in the arts, and has undertaken several projects to fight the lack of representation of people of color. In 1982, she co-founded Britain’s first black women’s theater company, the Theater of Black Women; In 2007 she launched a mentoring program for poets of colour, and in 2012 she created, together with Brunel University, the Brunel International Prize for African Poetry. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University in London. With “Girl, Woman, Others,” her eighth novel, making her the first black woman to win this award, which she shared with Margaret Atwood. In October 2021, her first essay book will appear, “Manifesto: why you should not surrender”, which AdN will publish in the coming months. Also available from Bernardine Evaristo in AdN: «Girl, woman, others«.