The Long Song by Andrea Levy

By Eithne Farry  on Thursday 5 November 2009

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An emotional tale of slavery, rebellion and family ties

Andrea Levy won the Orange Prize for Fiction for Small Island, with her bittersweet exploration of how to survive, love and belong in a new, strange country. Here, Levy tells the story of July, a slave girl who worked on a sugar plantation in Jamaica and lived through the Baptist Wars - a 10-day uprising that mobilised the slaves into a withdrawal of their labour - and its aftermath, ending in the eventual abolition of slavery. July's narrative, with intense immediacy, places her own family history against this backdrop, describing her mother's and son's worlds, and the moneyed existence of Caroline Mortimer, the white woman who owned the plantation and the countless numbers of people who worked there for her.

Review by Eithne Farry

Release date: Thursday 5 November 2009

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