Andrea Levy’s prize-winning novel ‘Small Island’ (2004) - a story of post-war Caribbean migration. Intrinsically linked with Levy's own Caribbean ancestry 'Small Island’ has become strongly associated with the experience of the Windrush generation. The story is told through the voices of four narrators – Hortense and Gilbert, who migrate from Jamaica to London in 1948, and an English couple, Queenie and Bernard, in whose house in London they find lodgings.
Andrea Levy (1956-2019) was born in London to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948. Levy began writing in her mid-30s, producing novels that she, as a young woman, had always wanted to read – stories that reflect the experiences of black Britons, looking closely and perceptively at Britain and its changing population and at the relationships that bind British history with that of the Caribbean.
In her first three novels Levy explored the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. In Small Island, her fourth novel, Levy examines the experiences of her father's generation returning to Britain after being in the RAF during the Second World War. Alongside the story of the Jamaicans who came looking for a new life in the Mother Country, Levy also explores the adjustments and problems faced by the English people the Jamaicans came to live amongst.
In interviews, Levy has discussed how the ideas for ‘Small Island’ began to form after she “finally” persuaded her mother to discuss her traumatic experience of migration:
“The way I remember it, neither she nor my dad ever seemed to want to talk about their lives in Jamaica, or about why in 1948 they made the momentous decision to leave that island to come to another... “
In 2019 Levy’s iconic novel was adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson, directed by Rufus Norris at the National Theatre. A testament to the story’s continued relevance and Levy’s deft treatment of issues around race and prejudice, this highly acclaimed production of Small Island returned to the National Theatre in February 2022.