Andrea Levy was born in London, England in 1956 to
Jamaican parents. Her first three novels explored - from different
perspectives - the problems faced by black British-born children of
Jamaican emigrants.
Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin' (1994), is the story of a Jamaican family living in London in the 1960s. Her second, Never Far From Nowhere (1996), is set during the 1970s and tells the story of two very
different sisters living on a London council estate. In her third, Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Faith Jackson,
a young black Londoner, visits Jamaica after suffering a nervous
breakdown and discovers a previously unknown personal history.
Small Island,
her fourth novel,(2004), is set in 1948 and through the stories of both
English and Jamaican characters it explores a point in England's past
when the country began to change.
Andrea Levy has been a judge
for the Saga Prize and the Orange Prize for Fiction. As well as novels
she has also written short stories which have been read on radio and
anthologised. She has been recipient of an Arts Council Writers Award
and was the winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction. She lives and
works in London.
Fellow novelist ANNE BERRY on ANDREA LEVY
Andrea Levy’s writing springs off the page at me. It is so full of energy, colour and verve. Her novel Small Island, rightly showered with awards, about the post war arrival of Caribbean immigrants to Britain and their struggle to integrate into a closed society, is a delight from start to finish.
