Small island

Small Island is a delicately wrought and profoundly moving novel that handles weighty themes such as empire, prejudice, war, and love with a lightness of touch and generosity of spirit.

The story is set in London in 1948 and jumps back in time to the Second World War, capturing the rapid cultural changes in post-war London.

It follows the lives of four main characters: Hortense, a black woman from Jamaica; Queenie, a white woman living in London; and their respective husbands, Gilbert and Bernard.

The novel highlights the racial prejudice faced by Jamaican immigrants in England and the complex interactions between characters from different backgrounds.

It won the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Whitbread Book of the Year, and the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize.