Andrea Levy was the author of six books, including Small Island, which won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and the Whitbread book of the Year

Born in England to Jamaican parents who came to Britain in 1948, Andrea Levy grew up on a council estate in north London before studying textile design at Middlesex University. She did not read a novel until she was 23 years old and came to storytelling via what she had seen on television, rather than what she had read. She wrote novels about what she knew: engaging books that reflect the experiences of Black Britons and the intimacies that bind British history with that of the Caribbean. Her award-winning Small Island was adapted for TV and for the stage. Her novel The Long Song won the Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize. It, too, was adapted for TV. She died in 2019, aged 62.

Andrea Levy

The Long Song is set in the time of slavery, and the years immediately after, but it is really a story about a person’s life, a lost voice from history that needed to be heard

— Andrea Levy writing on the inspiration behind The Long Song

Watch the trailer for the BBC adaption of The Long Song

All nominated books

The Long Song