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The Guardian
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
My perfect holiday reading, by Bernardine Evaristo, David Nicholls, Zadie Smith and more
Zadie SmithFor me summer reading is about immersion. Three novels fully absorbed me recently. Flesh by David Szalay is a very smart and stylish novel about the 1%, filtered through the life of a Hungarian bodyguard/driver in their midst. Cécé by Emmelie Prophète (out 23 September) vividly depicts the slums of contemporary Haiti via a very online young sex worker who lives her best life on Facebook. Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie features a series of unforgettable women trying to work out what love means. The summer read I'm looking forward to myself is Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata, a true original. David NichollsI would recommend two books, 800 pages and a shade under 150, depending on what you can carry. Helen Garner's collected diaries, How to End a Story, are frank, gripping and revealing about family, marriage and the writing life, while Anthony Shapland's debut, A Room Above a Shop, is a small, tender love story, almost a poem. Bernardine EvaristoNo Small Thing by Orlaine McDonald is one of the best debut novels I've read in recent years. A family of women, mother, daughter and granddaughter, carry unresolved and unspoken trauma that's passed down through the generations. This poisons their relationships and ability to fully function in society. Intense, visceral and beautifully written, McDonald's novel captures their damaged souls. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters is the follow-up to her bestselling novel Detransition, Baby. Consisting of three short stories and a novella, this is adventurous, mind-expanding and provocative fiction that skilfully serves up different possibilities of gender and sexuality. Yael van der WoudenThe Pretender by Jo Harkin tells the story of Lambert Simnel, the Tudor Pretender. It's funny and it's devastating. I'm having a fantastic time reading it. Katherine RundellMy favourite novel so far this year has been James by Percival Everett. It has the satirical bite of his previous work, but a furious generosity that is its own. A reimagining of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, its premise is that the language of the enslaved is a learned facade to appease the white slavers. I read Huckleberry Finn first and then James immediately afterwards: a fantastic reading experience. Olivia LaingI saved Gliff by Ali Smith for the perfect moment: the day that Keir Starmer gave his 'island of strangers' speech. What a balm and a corrective, then, to read this propulsive dystopian novel about how to refuse the imperatives of fascism, how to stay open to strangers in all their guises. Beautiful and visionary. Reading about spycops might not seem the obvious beach activity, but Disclosure by Kate Wilson is a gripping account of an environmental activist who discovered her former boyfriend was a police spy, a technique regularly used to infiltrate and discredit non-violent activists. The most invigorating aspect of this disturbing book is how the women turned the tables, piecing together evidence and eventually winning a victory in court. Jonathan CoeIf you're heading to a British seaside town this summer, the book you should take with you is Birding by Rose Ruane. Set in a desolate unnamed resort where the pastel facades of Victorian buildings 'crumble like stale cake after a party', and the pier boasts a helter skelter 'crusted with stalactites of guano', this is the bleak but hopeful story of Lydia, once one half of a fleetingly successful girl band, piecing her life back together in the face of falsely remembered trauma. Ruane is a marvellous writer whose prose glitters with perfect metaphors and wincingly caustic one-liners. In fact you should take this on holiday wherever you're going. Anne EnrightLiterary biographies are a great choice for the summer: I raced through Frances Wilson's whip-smart Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark, and am currently loving An Afterlife, Francesca Wade's searching and eloquent double biography of the life and posthumous reputation of Gertrude Stein. In fiction, my big recent discovery has been the work of Samanta Schweblin. Good and Evil and Other Stories is coming out in August and they are just stellar – extreme, uncanny and beautifully controlled. Also there's a backlist for me to catch up on. Time to clear a new space on my bookshelf. Samantha HarveyAbdulrazak Gurnah's Theft is complex in its themes of class and entitlement, but it's also, fundamentally, a piece of great, satisfying storytelling to lose yourself in. Katie Kitamura's latest novel, Audition, is slick, sharp, strange and singular. I love her work; she's a writer who can conjure intrigue from the scantest detail, and you'll gulp this novel down in one in-breath. Michael RosenKiku: The Japanese Art of Good Listening by Dr Haru Yamada. It's strange that when we say the word 'conversation', the first thing we think of is speakers. Yet, an equal part of conversation is listening. In fact, the speaker speaks with an eye and ear out on who the listener is and how they're reacting. This is a great insight into how all this plays out, seen through the prism of Japanese culture and language. I'd also recommend Beyond the Secret Garden: Racially Minoritised People in British Children's Books by Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O'Connor. What's it like as a child to read classic children's books if you can't see yourself in the garden? Or to only see yourself there as people who are 'less than' the great characters and heroes? Or flip that over and ask, what does all this do for those who see themselves in books as always centre stage? Colm TóibínMore than a quarter of a century ago in Sydney, I caught a glimpse across a room of the novelist Helen Garner and her companion, the novelist Murray Bail. I could hardly imagine that I would become obsessed with both of them courtesy of Garner's marvellous How to End a Story: Collected Diaries, all 800 pages of it. This diary begins by registering what is ordinary, how days are, what it is like to be a writer, a daughter, a mother, a lover, a citizen of Melbourne. Part of it is a doomed love story. So, I have also been reading some of the writings of the object of Garner's attention, three short books by Bail: Longhand: A Writer's Notebook; Notebooks 1970-2003; and his luminous and mysterious semi-novel called He. Ali SmithIt's a Muriel Spark summer for me. There's the first volume of her Letters (1944-1963) edited by Dan Gunn (out 28 August); I can't wait to read it. Brand new right now is Frances Wilson's truly amazing biography of Spark's formative years and work, Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark. An electrifying work in itself, often as mazy and gripping as a psychological thriller and as unsettling, sharp and playfully uncanny as a piece of Spark's own fiction, it's also one of the most revealing books about societal postwar paranoia and nervous fracture I've ever read. My other summer recommendation is also a touch Sparkian in a world distracted by fakery: Nell Stevens's marvel of a novel The Original, a story of creativity, legacy and real worth, is full of narrative cunning, narrative goodness. What a very good heart it has. Mick HerronIf poetry on the beach appeals – and why wouldn't it; it sounds like a cocktail – Michael Longley's Ash Keys, published shortly before his death in January, is strongly recommended. Selected volumes are intended to provoke new readings of familiar poems, and this one works superbly – I had undervalued his later verse, thinking it slight in comparison to earlier work. This proves me wrong. Abigail Dean's third novel, meanwhile, continues her winning streak, confirming her aptitude for examining the aftermath of trauma. The Death of Us, a love story interrupted by violent intrusion, is moving and deeply impressive. Curtis SittenfeldAnimal Instinct by Amy Shearn is a delicious, sexy, insightful, big-hearted joy (that, believe it or not, features both the pandemic and divorce). After her marriage ends, middle-aged Brooklyn mom-of-three Rachel Bloomstein goes on many dates with men and women, has wild yet as-responsible-as-possible sex, and works on creating an AI chatbot that will combine the best parts of all her romantic prospects. Rachel is so open, generous-hearted and funny that reading about her makes you feel like one of the friends who comes over for drinks on her balcony. Rutger BregmanBury the Chains by Adam Hochschild and Suffrage by Ellen Carol DuBois are two gripping accounts of what may be the greatest human rights movements in history: the fight to end slavery and the struggle for women's suffrage. Both are powerful reminders that real change demands extraordinary perseverance. Of the 12 founders of the British Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade, only one lived to see slavery abolished across the empire. Of the 68 women at the Seneca Falls convention, just one lived to see women gain the vote – and she was too ill to cast a ballot. Their stories are a call to all of us still fighting today: for tax justice, for democracy, for an end to the moral catastrophe of factory farming, and so much more. William DalrympleFara Dabhoiwala's remarkable global history, What Is Free Speech? is ostensibly a very different book from his first, on the origins of sex, yet it shares its predecessor's wit, fluency and dazzling erudition. Constantly surprising, it reminds us quite what an innovative idea free speech was when it was first upheld as a civilised goal in the 18th century. Examining who in history could speak, and who was silenced, Dabhoiwala reminds us of the crucial relationship between speech and power. How the World Made the West by Josephine Quinn is one of the most fascinating works of global history to appear for years. Incredibly wide-ranging, it connects disparate parts of the ancient world with dazzling shafts of insight and intuition, held together by vast scholarship, elegant prose and an enviable lightness of touch. It completely reframes our conception of the western classical world, allowing us to understand just how globalised and interconnected mankind has always been. Finally, Pankaj Mishra illuminates the darkest of landscapes in The World After Gaza. It is as thoughtful, scholarly and subtle as it is brave and original. By a long way the most horrifying and thought-provoking book I have read this year. Sarah PerrySarah Hall's new novel Helm (out 28 August) is incandescently good (even by her incandescent standards). It spans thousands of years up to the present day, and concerns the Helm wind, a phenomenon that blows down from a Cumbrian hilltop and wreaks mischievous havoc. There are meteorologists and stone-age women visionaries and peculiar unbiddable girls and terrifying medieval priests: it is sexy and funny and erudite and strange, and the prose is dizzyingly good. Up there with her best. I'm also looking forward to reading Mic Wright's Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn't and Why it Matters. Wright is always excoriatingly funny and righteously indignant: this promises to be all those things and more. Nussaibah YounisJen Beagin's clever, hilarious and absolutely bonkers novel Big Swiss will have you laughing out loud and questioning everything you think you know about trauma. Greta, a middle-aged woman fleeing her past, takes a job with therapist Om, transcribing his therapy sessions. But this is small town Hudson, and Greta soon bumps into voices she recognises. When she develops an obsession with Om's sardonic and larger-than-life client Big Swiss, shenanigans ensue. Stag Dance by Torrey Peters, a quartet of stories, covers utterly original ground, and will keep you captivated with its voice, energy and wit. There's a hormone-inhibiting virus forcing cis people into parity with trans people; there are two loggers in the 1900s battling for the affections of the axeman-in-chief; there's a sexually confused boarding school love story; and a trans fetishist competing for legitimacy with a trans traditionalist. And, randomly, there are a lot of pigs. Florence KnappKakigori Summer by Emily Itami follows three sisters as they briefly return to their childhood home on the Japanese coast. It's a book about belonging, often explored through language, with piercing observations around a family's shorthand, a grandmother's admonishments, and how the peculiarities of Japanese and English culture are highlighted in the words that are absent, and uniquely present, in our vocabularies. It is funny, gentle and warm, though Itami's sentences are never fluffy. And it contains one of the best descriptions of overthinking I've ever read: 'the inside of her head is like the final note of some operatic calamity vibrato-ing without end'. Peter FrankopanI greatly enjoyed Oliver Moody's Baltic: The Future of Europe, which provides revelatory coverage of a region that is not only important but looks likely to be the next arena for competition between Russia and its neighbours. Patrick McGee's Apple in China: The Capture of the World's Greatest Company is terrific too – not only charting Apple's rise but also that of China's tech sector and its economy as a whole. McGee argues that Apple helped Make China Great Again. I also admired Bijan Omrani's God is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England – a finely judged and beautifully written account. To explore all the books in the Guardian's summer reading list visit Delivery charges may apply.
The Guardian
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I'm here to open doors': Bernardine Evaristo on success, controversy and why she plans to donate her £100k award
Back in 2013, Bernardine Evaristo gave a reading in a south London bookshop from her novel Mr Loverman. Only six people showed up, a couple of them were dozing and she realised they were homeless people who had come to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. Last month, the hit TV adaptation Mr Loverman, about a 74-year-old gay Caribbean man set in Hackney, east London, won two Baftas, including leading actor for Lennie James, making him the first Black British actor to win the TV award in its 70-year history. 'I checked Wikipedia!' Evaristo exclaims of this shocking fact when we meet in London. Evaristo's long career is one of firsts and creating them for others. In 2019, at the age of 60, she became the first Black woman to win the Booker prize – shared with Margaret Atwood – for Girl, Woman, Other, 12 interwoven stories of Black, female and one non-binary character. She is also the first Black woman to become president of the Royal Society of Literature (RSL) – only the second woman in its 200-year history, not to mention the first not to have attended Oxford, Cambridge or Eton. And this week she became the recipient of the Women's prize inaugural Outstanding Contribution award. 'I became an 'overnight success',' she writes of her Booker win in her 2021 memoir, Manifesto, 'after 40 years working professionally in the arts.' It is these now 45 years that are being recognised by this new award. Ironically, she has never won the Women's prize, although she was shortlisted for Girl, Woman, Other. 'This award more than makes up for it,' she beams. The Booker judges' decision to break the rules and split the prize between Evaristo and Atwood caused an outcry, with many accusing the panel of undermining the historic recognition of a Black female novelist. Evaristo was cheerfully unperturbed. 'It couldn't have gone better for me, to be honest,' she insists now. 'I really do mean that. In terms of how it accelerated my career and gave me so many more opportunities and such a large audience for my work.' Girl, Woman, Other was on the bestseller list for nine consecutive weeks. Barack Obama chose it as one of his favourite books of 2019. Hamish Hamilton reissued her backlist. After being told for decades that there was no market for her work, she was suddenly in demand. So much so that a 2021 Private Eye cartoon – now on her fridge – showed a guy exclaiming: 'Come quick! Bernardine Evaristo isn't on Radio 4!' Although she found it funny, there is an unmistakeable whiff of condescension. 'Why notice me?' she asks. 'When there are many people who are constantly in the media, who are not Black women. You notice the Black woman and suddenly it's too much. You want us to be quiet and invisible.' Tall and good-naturedly open, Evaristo is in no danger of keeping quiet or becoming invisible. Today she is wearing a hot-pink blouse the same shade as the trouser suit she wore to the Booker ceremony, her curls kept in check by a colourful headscarf. She is interested in power, how those outside the establishment can succeed without abandoning their own identities. 'The headline is going to be 'I want power!'' she hoots, as one not unfamiliar with controversy (the traditionally sleepy RSL has had more than its share of headlines under her tenure). 'What do we mean when we say power?' she says seriously. 'Influence, to have an impact, to effect change, to assume leadership positions? It's so important that power is shared out.' Unlike the late poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who rejected an OBE, Evaristo accepted hers in 2020, arguing that not to do so is to risk enforcing the idea of 'white honours for white British people'. How does it feel to be at the heart of the establishment, to no longer be 'throwing stones at the fortress', as she puts it in Manifesto? 'I still believe in what I believe in. I'm just much more capable and careful, hopefully strategic and able to have more of an impact than I did when I was in my 20s,' she says, reminding me that she has been professor of creative writing at Brunel University for many years now. 'You go through an angry period – as you get older you can't keep that up – but I'm still very alert to the inequality in the world, and also inequality in my industry. I am not there to endorse the status quo. I'm there to bring other people with me and to open the doors, always, to great talent.' She has not just opened doors but built them where none existed. From the moment she graduated from Rose Bruford drama school in 1982 and co-founded the Theatre of Black Women with fellow students, the playwright Patricia Hilaire and director Paulette Randall, she has set about making things happen. Those early days were not just about creating theatre, she says now, but also work. 'Because we were just so unemployable as Black women.' They put on Jackie Kay's first play Chiaroscuro in 1986. Since then, Evaristo has set up projects, mentoring schemes and prizes for under-represented poets and novelists. She has run workshops and courses, sat on judging panels (47, by her last count) and boards ('not something I necessarily want to do, trust me!'). Most recently, she launched the Black Britain: Writing Back series with her long-term publisher Simon Prosser at Hamish Hamilton, republishing 13 books by writers of colour since 1900. She plans to donate all her 'huge' prize money (£100,000) from this latest award to an as yet undisclosed project to support other writers. She hasn't done all this because she is 'saintly. Clearly not!' she laughs. Throughout our conversation, she is at pains not to sound like a 'do-gooder': we are here to talk about her outstanding contribution, I remind her. 'If I'm asked to do something, I need to accept the invitation, so that I can make a difference,' she explains. 'It is very important for me as a Black, British, working-class, now-older woman to acknowledge that really important position.' The fourth of eight siblings, Evaristo grew up in 'an activist household', she says. Her Nigerian father was a welder who became a local Labour councillor, her mother, a devout Catholic from an Irish family, was a primary school teacher and trade union rep. Evaristo's childhood in Woolwich, south-east London, in the 1960s was one of racial insults and smashed windows. Her father kept a hammer at the side of the bed for his whole life in England. The young Bernardine developed a 'self-protective force field' that persists to this day, along with a determination to fight her corner – with words. After leaving home for drama school at 18, her 20s were spent in a blaze of cigarettes and love affairs – with women – hustling for jobs and moving between the various short-term housing available in the 80s. 'I really cherish that period,' she says. She has been straight for 35 years, and today lives with her husband in the outskirts of west London; she has swapped the Marlboro Reds and Drambuie for yoga and meditation. In her 30s, before the boom in creative writing courses, she signed up for a personal development course. 'My parents were not part of the elite,' she explains. 'So they weren't going to pass on to me strategies for how to succeed.' Evaristo was manifesting long before Instagram promised us we could live our best lives. The course made her realise 'you can change big and you can expect the best. So why not go for that?' she says. She wrote a note to herself that she would win the Booker prize one day. The next three decades were spent working really hard to make it happen. 'Nobody was waiting for me to publish books. Nobody was commissioning me,' she has said in a radio interview. 'I just wrote on spec and hoped that somebody would publish me.' Sign up to Bookmarks Discover new books and learn more about your favourite authors with our expert reviews, interviews and news stories. Literary delights delivered direct to you after newsletter promotion Her first poetry collection, Island of Abraham, was published in 1994. Lara, a verse-novel based on her parents' marriage, came out three years later. Then came The Emperor's Babe, another verse-novel and her first with Penguin, which imagines life for a Black girl in Roman London. Soul Tourists, a zany road trip packed with Black ghosts from white western history; Blonde Roots, a satire that reverses the power dynamics of the slave trade; and a novella called Hello Mum, about a 14-year-old boy growing up on a council estate, followed. All her novels deal with the African diaspora in some way, mixing history, stylistic experimentalism and humour. 'I'm always going for the difficult stories and to be subversive,' she says. 'I'm always looking to find original ways into what I'm writing about.' Mr Loverman 'felt like a taboo subject'. Much has been written about the Windrush generation, but no stories that she knew of told a love story between two elderly Caribbean men. When it was first published, she was told it was 'too niche' to be adapted for television, because its protagonist, Barrington Jedidiah Walker, 'was Black, old and gay'. While her reputation was steadily building, sales were not. She wouldn't even look at her royalty statements when they arrived each year. Then, finally, her much-manifested breakthrough came. With Girl, Woman, Other she set out 'to explore as many Black women in a single novel as possible', ranging in age from 19 to 93, all with different backgrounds, faiths, sexualities and classes. Amma, a lesbian playwright, is clearly a version of Evaristo's younger self. Once again, in a style she calls 'fusion fiction', she plays fast and loose with punctuation in favour of the rhythms of speech and thought. Here are the monologues of the silenced women Evaristo wrote for the theatre all those years ago. Her Booker win coincided with a long-overdue effort to make publishing more inclusive. 'George Floyd,' she says, when I ask what she thinks was the catalyst for this change. 'There was already an awareness of it, but definitely the George Floyd murder and Black Lives Matter was a turning point.' Where once she knew every writer of colour in publishing, and could count them on one hand, she says, today she can't keep up. 'Identity politics has always existed,' she says of today's culture wars. 'We just didn't name it that.' Last year, she wrote a piece in the Guardian refuting the 'false allegations' against the RSL and the rumours that she had swept in with 'radical' new measures for appointing fellows, sidelining older, more established names. 'It's a great honour and a privilege,' she says mischievously when I press her for more. 'There's always this argument that if things diversify, standards are dropped.' Evaristo even manages to bring positive thinking to our current global predicament. 'Every decade, we are evolving. From my childhood to today, we have evolved,' she says. 'We can't do anything about America, but we can put up a fight in this country.' Of all these achievements, what makes her most proud? 'I feel I can enjoy the successes I've had of late,' she replies without hesitation, 'because I know I haven't kept it to myself.' Bernardine Evaristo is the winner of the Women's prize outstanding contribution award.
Gulf Today
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Evaristo wins accolades for breaking literary boundaries
Bernardine Evaristo doesn't like boundaries. For the Booker Prize-winning novelist, rules about genre, grammar or what a working-class biracial woman can achieve are all to be challenged and swept away. Evaristo was announced on Wednesday as recipient of the 100,000-pound ($135,000) Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award for her 'transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices.' Evaristo, 66, received the prize both for her work to help promote women and writers of colour, and for writing that takes in poetry, a memoir and seven novels including the Booker-winning 'Girl, Woman, Other.' 'I just go wherever my imagination takes me,' she said. 'I didn't want to write the kind of novels that would take you on a predictable emotional or moral journey.' Evaristo had already explored autobiographical fiction, historical settings and alternate realities when she won the Booker in 2019 for 'Girl Woman, Other,' a polyphonic novel told from the point of view of a dozen characters, largely Black women, with widely varying ages, experiences and sexualities. She was the first woman of African heritage to be awarded the prize, which was founded in 1969 and has a reputation for transforming writers' careers. When she won, Evaristo was 60 and had been a writer for decades. She says the recognition 'came at the right time for me.' 'Maybe I wouldn't have handled it so well if I was younger,' she told The Associated Press at her London home. 'It changed my career — in terms of book sales, foreign rights, translation, the way in which I was viewed as a writer. Various other opportunities came my way. And I felt that I had the foundations to handle that.' Evaristo's house on a quiet suburban street is bright and comfortable, with wooden floors, vibrant textiles and a large wooden writing desk by the front window. Large photos of her Nigerian paternal grandparents hang on one wall. Her work often draws on her roots as the London-born child of a Nigerian father and white British mother. Like much of Evaristo's work, 'Girl, Woman, Other' eludes classification. She calls it 'fusion fiction' for its melding of poetry and prose into a novel that relishes the texture and rhythm of language. 'I kind of dispense with the rules of grammar,' she said. 'I think I have 12 full stops in the novel.' If that sounds dauntingly experimental, readers didn't think so. 'Girl, Woman, Other' has sold more than 1 million copies and was chosen as one of Barack Obama's books of the year. Evaristo traces her love of poetry to the church services of her Catholic childhood, where she soaked up the rhythms of the Bible and sermons, 'without realizing I was absorbing poetry.' When she started writing novels, the love of poetry remained, along with a desire to tell stories of the African diaspora. One of her first major successes, 'The Emperor's Babe,' is a verse novel set in Roman Britain. 'Most people think the Black history of Britain only began in the 20th century,' Evaristo said. 'I wanted to write about a Black presence in Roman Britain — because there was a Black presence in Roman Britain 1,800 years ago.' Another novel, 'Blonde Roots,' is set in an alternative historical timeline in which Africans have enslaved Europeans, and was nominated for a major science-fiction award. 'Mr Loverman,' was an attempt to move beyond cliched images of Britain's postwar Caribbean immigrants. It was recently made into a BBC television series starring Lennie James and Sharon D. Clarke. Her latest award is a one-off accolade marking the 30th anniversary of the annual Women's Prizes for English-language fiction and nonfiction. Women's Prize founder Kate Mosse said Evaristo's 'dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a 40-year career made her the ideal recipient.' Evaristo, who teaches creative writing at Brunel University of London, plans to use the prize money to help other women writers through an as-yet undisclosed project. She has long been involved with projects to level the playing field for under-represented writers, and is especially proud of Complete Works, a mentoring program for poets of color that she ran for a decade. Associated Press
New Indian Express
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Indian Express
British writer Bernardine Evaristo receives accolade for breaking literary boundaries
LONDON: Bernardine Evaristo doesn't like boundaries. For the Booker Prize -winning novelist, rules about genre, grammar or what a working-class biracial woman can achieve are all to be challenged and swept away. Evaristo was announced Wednesday as recipient of the 100,000-pound ($135,000) Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award for her 'transformative impact on literature and her unwavering dedication to uplifting under-represented voices.' Evaristo, 66, received the prize both for her work to help promote women and writers of color, and for writing that takes in poetry, a memoir and seven novels including the Booker-winning 'Girl, Woman, Other.' 'I just go wherever my imagination takes me,' she said. 'I didn't want to write the kind of novels that would take you on a predictable emotional or moral journey.' An eclectic output Evaristo had already explored autobiographical fiction, historical settings and alternate realities when she won the Booker in 2019 for 'Girl Woman, Other,' a polyphonic novel told from the point of view of a dozen characters, largely Black women, with widely varying ages, experiences and sexualities. She was the first woman of African heritage to be awarded the prize, which was founded in 1969 and has a reputation for transforming writers' careers. When she won, Evaristo was 60 and had been a writer for decades. She says the recognition 'came at the right time for me.'
Wales Online
04-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Wales Online
Bernardine Evaristo receives Women's Prize outstanding contribution award
Bernardine Evaristo receives Women's Prize outstanding contribution award The one-off literary honour celebrates Evaristo's body of work and dedication to advancing the voices of people from underrepresented backgrounds (Image: Getty Images ) Award-winning novelist Bernardine Evaristo has been announced as the recipient of an outstanding contribution award from the Women's Prize Trust. The one-off literary honour celebrates Evaristo's body of work and dedication to advancing the voices of people from underrepresented backgrounds. The trust is known for the Women's Prize for Fiction, a popular literary award that was established in 1996. Evaristo, 66, who was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 2019 for her novel Girl, Woman, Other, will be presented with the award and £100,000 prize money on June 12 at the Women's Prize Trust's summer party in London. She said: "I am completely overwhelmed and overjoyed to receive this unique award. "I feel such deep gratitude towards the Women's Prize for honouring me in this way. Article continues below "Over the last three decades I have witnessed with great admiration and respect how the Women's Prize for Fiction has so bravely and brilliantly championed and developed women's writing, always from an inclusive stance. "The financial reward comes as an unexpected blessing in my life and, given the mission of the Women's Prize Trust, it seems fitting that I spend this substantial sum supporting other women writers; more details on this will be forthcoming." Evaristo will be honoured alongside the winners of the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction and the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, which was won by V V Ganeshananthan and Naomi Klein respectively, last year. Authors who have been longlisted or won the Women's Prize for Fiction over the past three decades, and had published a minimum of five books, were eligible for the outstanding contribution award. The winner of the outstanding contribution award was selected by a judging panel chaired by novelist and non-fiction author Kate Mosse, founder director of the Women's Prize for Fiction and Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. She said: "My fellow judges and I always knew it would be a tall order to choose just one author from the many exceptional contemporary writers who have made such a huge contribution in a world where women's voices are increasingly being silenced, where the arts and artists are under attack. "Books encourage empathy, they offer alternative and diverse points of view; they help us to stand in other people's shoes and to see our own worlds in the mirror. "In the end, we felt that Bernardine Evaristo's beautiful, ambitious and inventive body of work (which includes plays, poetry, essays, monologues and memoir as well as award-winning fiction), her dazzling skill and imagination, and her courage to take risks and offer readers a pathway into diverse and multifarious worlds over a forty-year career, made her the ideal recipient of the Women's Prize Outstanding Contribution Award." The Women's Prize Trust says the one-off award marks the 30th anniversary year of the Women's Prize for Fiction. Evaristo, who was born in Woolwich, south London, and is of Anglo-Nigerian descent, has shed light on the lives of modern British women through her work, taking an interest in the African diaspora. She has launched several successful writing schemes to support women writers and under-represented writers of colour, including the Complete Works mentoring scheme for poets. Several of her works, including The Emperor's Babe and Hello Mum, have been adapted into BBC Radio 4 plays. Article continues below Evaristo's other novels include Blonde Roots, Soul Tourists and Mr Loverman. The latter was turned into an eight-part BBC drama starring Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare. The actors, who star as lovers struggling to go public with their relationship, picked up Baftas for their roles during the academy's TV awards in May.
