Small Island
An international bestseller. Andrea Levy's Small Island won the Orange Prize for Fiction, The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best, The Whitbread Novel Award, The Whitbread Book of the Year Award, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
Hortense Joseph arrives in London from Jamaica in 1948 with her life in her suitcase, her heart broken, her resolve intact. Her husband, Gilbert Joseph, returns from the war expecting to be received as a hero, but finds his status as a black man in Britain to be second class. His white landlady, Queenie, raised as a farmer's daughter, befriends Gilbert, and later Hortense, with innocence and courage, until the unexpected arrival of her husband, Bernard, who returns from combat with issues of his own to resolve.
Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.
Source: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780312429522/smallisland/
Keywords/Themes
World War II, Windrush generation, migration, prejudice, racism, class, belonging, disillusionment, identity, cultural conflict, displacement.
Book Review & Recommended Use in Classroom
Small Island masterfully interweaves the lives of a British couple and two Jamaican immigrants from the Windrush generation—their dreams and expectations, their prejudice, disillusionment, and personal growth. This novel tells a piece of British history at the intersection of postwar and postcolonial England. The British characters, their lives destroyed by World War II, come face-to-face with the Jamaican protagonists, who truly believe themselves to be British as well.
I think Small Island can be used effectively in class to introduce this part of history—the Windrush generation as an example of migration, and the connection between Europe’s colonial history and the World Wars. The British Imperial War Museums offer materials to discuss who fought in WWII, and in 2019 the National Theatre of Great Britain staged a very good play based on the novel (which could be streamed online at the time). The only reservations I have are about the novel’s length.
(Alexandra, April 2025)
Sensitive Content
Themes like racism and xenophobia (with racial slurs), violent acts (including war-related trauma, shootings, physical abuse, police brutality), child abuse, sexual content, and death.
About the Author
Andrea Levy was born in 1956 in London to Jamaican parents who had arrived in Britain as part of the Windrush generation. Raised in a working-class household in Highbury, North London, she grew up with little direct knowledge of Jamaica and only began exploring her Caribbean heritage and racial identity in depth as an adult. Levy studied textile design at Middlesex Polytechnic and worked in graphic design and costume design before turning to writing in her thirties. Her early novels reflected her efforts to understand her cultural roots and experiences as a Black British woman, culminating in Small Island (2004), a widely acclaimed novel that examined the lives of Jamaican immigrants and their British neighbors in postwar Britain. Levy’s work was shaped by her personal journey to uncover and give voice to the Black British experience, especially that of women navigating identity, migration, and belonging.
