Bernardine Evaristo Books

Doris’s journey begins in innocence, in an alternate England where whiteness carries no privilege. Her voice reveals the ordinariness of the day she was stolen—living in a simple village, loved by her family, tending to the rhythms of rural life. This opening calm shatters once she is kidnapped by A...

From Blonde Roots

When Doris arrives in the New World, she is purchased by Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, a man whose noble bearing is contrasted by his moral corrosion. The plantation environment is both grotesque and familiar. Here, the Europane slaves labor under a punishing sun, cultivating crops destined to enrich...

From Blonde Roots

When we first meet Amma, she is standing on the brink of her greatest professional triumph — the opening night of her play at the National Theatre — and yet she stands also at a crossroads with herself. In her fifties now, she recalls the decades when she fought against patriarchy and whiteness in t...

From Girl, Woman, Other

Yazz enters the novel as a spirited, opinionated university student, the daughter of Amma and her gay friend Roland. Her world is one of Wi-Fi and hashtags, of fierce online debates about identity and privilege. Yet beneath her confidence lies an unease: she is both proud of her mother’s radical leg...

From Girl, Woman, Other

Mum, you always said our block in South London was full of noise and life, and you were right. From morning to night, the streets throbbed with people who had too many dreams for too little space. Ours wasn’t the kind of home you read about in magazines. But it was home—cramped, messy, and loud with...

From Hello Mum

Looking back, I can see how easily I was pulled in. It wasn’t like I woke up one day and said, ‘I want to be a criminal.’ It started simple—hanging around, sharing jokes, feeling like part of a crew. We gave ourselves names, invented a world that seemed big enough to hold all our teenage pride. The ...

From Hello Mum