Blonde Roots

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris, from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the hold of a slave-ship sailing to the New World . . .

In this fantastically imaginative inversion of the transatlantic slave trade - in which 'whytes' are enslaved by black people - Bernardine Evaristo has created a thought-provoking satire that is as accessible and readable as it is intelligent and insightful. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the society of today.

'A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual history. Evaristo keep[s] her wit and anger at a spicy simmer throughout' Daily Telegraph

'So human and real. Re-imagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence' Guardian

'A brilliant satire whose flashes of comedy make the underlying tragedy all the more poignant' Scotland on Sunday

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009
WINNER OF THE ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009
FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD 2010

© Bernadine Evaristo 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critics Review

  • A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history

    Independent on Sunday

  • This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo’s] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes

    The Times

  • A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid’s Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.

    Women's Prize for Fiction Podcast

  • Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence . . . human and real

    Guardian

  • [Blonde Roots] is a powerful gesture of fearless thematic ownership by one of the UK’s most unusual and challenging writers

    Independent

  • As with a Swiftean satire, Evaristo’s novel is powerful not for its fantastical elements but for its ability to bring home the horror of historical events

    Financial Times

More from the same

Author

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.