new novel from bernadine evaristo
"Blonde Roots"
A dazzling, imaginative reversal of the transatlantic slave trade in which Africans are the masters and Europeans are their slaves.
Welcome to a world turned upside down. Welcome to the world of Doris. One minute she’s this cute little girl playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone
puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the stinking hold of a slave ship sailing to the New World. When she finally arrives on a strange, tropical island, she discovers she is a pig-ugly savage with a brain the size of a pea, whose only purpose in life is to please her mistress.
Doris observes slavery from both sides. As an adult she becomes the personal assistant of her formidable master, Bwana, a.k.a. Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I. She also experiences the horrors of life in the sugarcane fields, where slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun.
Doris dreams of escape, of finding those she has loved and lost, of returning home to her motherland: England.
Written with Bernardine Evaristo¹s customary wit and zeal, Blonde Roots is at once a biting satire, a tragic family saga and a testament to the strength of the human spirit.
http://www.bevaristo.net/books_info.asp?b=blonde&t=i
Well this ought to be interesting. I rather enjoyed her verse novel "The Emperor's Babe," look forward to getting this eventually.
A dazzling, imaginative reversal of the transatlantic slave trade in which Africans are the masters and Europeans are their slaves.
Welcome to a world turned upside down. Welcome to the world of Doris. One minute she’s this cute little girl playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone
puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the stinking hold of a slave ship sailing to the New World. When she finally arrives on a strange, tropical island, she discovers she is a pig-ugly savage with a brain the size of a pea, whose only purpose in life is to please her mistress.
Doris observes slavery from both sides. As an adult she becomes the personal assistant of her formidable master, Bwana, a.k.a. Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I. She also experiences the horrors of life in the sugarcane fields, where slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun.
Doris dreams of escape, of finding those she has loved and lost, of returning home to her motherland: England.
Written with Bernardine Evaristo¹s customary wit and zeal, Blonde Roots is at once a biting satire, a tragic family saga and a testament to the strength of the human spirit.
http://www.bevaristo.net/books_info.asp?b=blonde&t=i
Well this ought to be interesting. I rather enjoyed her verse novel "The Emperor's Babe," look forward to getting this eventually.