Andrea Levy (7 March 1956 – 14 February 2019)
was an English author best known for the novels ''
Small Island'' (2004) and ''
The Long Song'' (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents, and her work explores topics related to
British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural and national identities.
Early life
Levy was of primarily
Afro-Jamaican descent. She had a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
paternal grandfather and a
Scots
Scots usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including:
* Scots language, a language of the West Germanic language family native to Scotland
* Scots people, a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland
* Scoti, a Latin na ...
maternal great-grandfather.
She said in a 2004 article: "Jews went to Jamaica in the 1600s. My paternal grandfather was born
Orthodox Jewish
Orthodox Judaism is the collective term for the traditionalist and theologically conservative branches of contemporary Judaism. Theologically, it is chiefly defined by regarding the Torah, both Written and Oral, as revealed by God to Moses ...
, from a very strict family, but after fighting in the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fig ...
he became a Christian and came back and married my grandmother. His family disowned him, so I don't know much about them."
Her father came to Britain on the in 1948,
with her mother following later that year on a
banana boat.
Levy was born in
Archway, north London, "the fourth, and baby, of the family, by a long way".
She grew up on a council estate in
Highbury, also in north London, and had a typical working-class upbringing.
She attended
Highbury Hill Grammar School and studied
textile design and
weaving
Weaving is a method of textile production in which two distinct sets of yarns or threads are interlaced at right angles to form a fabric or cloth. Other methods are knitting, crocheting, felting, and braiding or plaiting. The longitudin ...
at
Middlesex Polytechnic.
Career
Levy began her career as a costume assistant, working part-time in the costume departments of the
BBC and the
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal ...
,
while starting a graphic design company with her husband Bill Mayblin. During this time, she experienced a form of awakening to her identity concerning both her gender and her race.
At a racial-awareness session with colleagues at an
Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ...
sex education project, she found herself having to choose between a "white" and "black" side, which she found a "rude awakening".
Having not read a book until the age of 23,
she subsequently became aware of the power of books and began to read "excessively". It was easy enough to find literature by
black
Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...
writers from the United States, but she could find very little literature from black writers in the United Kingdom.
(A similar recognition led
Marsha Hunt in 1995 to initiate the
Saga Prize, for which Levy would become a judge.)
Levy began writing in her mid-30s, after her father died. It was not a therapeutic attempt to deal with her loss, but rather a need to understand where she came from.
[ ] In 1989, she enrolled in
Alison Fell
Alison Fell (born 1944 in Dumfries, Scotland) is a Scottish poet and novelist with a particular interest in women's roles and political victims. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies. Her children's books also pass on social messages.
Lif ...
's Creative Writing class at the
City Lit, continuing with the course for seven years.
Levy struggled initially to get her work published, her first novel being rejected by several companies that were unsure of how to market her writing.
She spoke in a 1999 interview of the "herd mentality" of publishers worried about the possibly limited market appeal of her work: "the main problem was that they perceived it as being just about race, and thought it would only appeal to black readers."
However, as
Margaret Busby noted, Levy "proved that to write about... migration from the specific yet complex perspective of being a black English female is not a limitation to finding a wide and appreciative readership, but in fact the exact opposite."
Work
In 1994 Levy's first novel, the semi-autobiographical ''Every Light in the House Burnin, was published and attracted favourable reviews. The ''
Independent on Sunday'' stated: "This story of a young girl in the 60s in north London, child of Jamaican migrants, stands comparison with some of the best stories about growing up poor – humorous and moving, unflinching and without sentiment". Her second novel, ''Never Far from Nowhere'' (1996), is a
coming-of-age story In genre studies, a coming-of-age story is a genre of literature, theatre, film, and video game that focuses on the growth of a protagonist from childhood to adulthood, or " coming of age". Coming-of-age stories tend to emphasize dialogue or inter ...
about two sisters of Jamaican parentage, Vivian and Olive, growing up in
Finsbury Park
Finsbury Park is a public park in the London neighbourhood of Harringay. It is in the area formerly covered by the historic parish of Hornsey, succeeded by the Municipal Borough of Hornsey. It was one of the first of the great London park ...
, London in the 1970s.
It was long-listed for the
Orange Prize.
After ''Never Far from Nowhere'', Levy visited Jamaica for the first time and what she learned of her family's past provided material for her next book, ''Fruit of the Lemon'' (1999).
The novel is set in England and Jamaica during the
Thatcher era, highlighting the differences between Jamaican natives and their British descendants. ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' noted the novel "illuminates the general situation facing all children of postcolonial immigrants".
Levy's fourth novel, ''
Small Island'' (2004), which looks at the immediate outcomes of
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
and migration on what became known as the
Windrush generation, was a critical success.
''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide ...
''s
Mike Phillips praised the writing and the subject matter, calling it Levy's "big book". Levy herself said in 2004: "When I started ''Small Island'' I didn't intend to write about the war. I wanted to start in 1948 with two women, one white, one black, in a house in
Earls Court, but when I asked myself, 'Who are these people and how did they get here?' I realised that 1948 was so very close to the war that nothing made sense without it. If every writer in Britain were to write about the war years there would still be stories to be told, and none of us would have come close to what really happened. It was such an amazing schism in the middle of a century. And Caribbean people got left out of the telling of that story, so I am attempting to put them back into it. But I am not telling it from only a Jamaican point of view. I want to tell stories from the black and white experience. It is a shared history."
''Small Island'' won three awards, namely the
Whitbread Book of the Year, the Orange Prize and the
Commonwealth Writers' Prize.
The novel was subsequently made into a two-part
television drama of the same title that was broadcast by the BBC in December 2009. A stage adaptation written by
Helen Edmundson premiered at the
National Theatre's Olivier Theatre in 2019, returning in 2022.
Levy's fifth and final novel, ''
The Long Song'', won the 2011
Walter Scott Prize and was shortlisted for the 2010
Man Booker Prize.
''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'' called it a "sensational novel".
Kate Kellaway in ''
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper Sunday editions, published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group, Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. ...
'' commented: "''The Long Song'' reads with the sort of ebullient effortlessness that can only be won by hard work." The novel was adapted as a three-part
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's Flagship (broadcasting), flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News ...
television series that was broadcast in December 2018.
Her short book ''Six Stories and an Essay'' was published in 2014. It begins with an autobiographical essay and includes stories that are drawn from various life experiences. Levy contributed to the 2019 anthology ''
New Daughters of Africa'' (edited by
Margaret Busby), which has enabled an
annual scholarship at
SOAS University of London.
Bonnie Greer paid tribute to Andrea Levy: "For every great writer, their own story is in their work, and is all that you really need to know.... What she described was a people integral to what the UK is. Now and forever. And their bard, Andrea Levy, is immortal."
''
The Bookseller
''The Bookseller'' is a British magazine reporting news on the publishing industry. Philip Jones is editor-in-chief of the weekly print edition of the magazine and the website. The magazine is home to the ''Bookseller''/Diagram Prize for Oddest ...
'' noted in 2019 that, in the UK, Levy had sold "a total of 1.23 million books for £7.9m, with ''Small Island'' her bestseller, selling 758,203 copies in paperback and a further 120,749 for the TV tie-in. It is the biggest-selling winner of the
Women's Prize to date."
Legacy
Documentary film "Andrea Levy: Her Island Story" (2018)
Levy was the subject of a film profile entitled "Andrea Levy: Her Island Story", first shown in December 2018 in
Alan Yentob's BBC One television arts documentary series ''
Imagine''.
Radio profile "Andrea Levy: In Her Own Words" (2020)
The
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of Talk radio, spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history fro ...
programme "Andrea Levy: In Her Own Words" was broadcast on 8 February 2020 in the ''
Archive on 4'' series, drawing on an in-depth interview in 2014 with oral historian Sarah O'Reilly for the
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
's Authors' Lives project, in which Levy spoke on condition that the recording would only be released after her death. The interview was accompanied by contributions from friends of Levy's including
Gary Younge, Baroness
Lola Young,
Louise Doughty, and
Margaret Busby, as well as Levy's husband Bill Mayblin.
Literary archive
It was announced in February 2020 that Levy's literary archive had been acquired by the British Library, including notebooks, research material, correspondence, emails and audio recordings.
Commemorative plaque
An
Islington
Islington () is a district in the north of Greater London, England, and part of the London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the ...
Heritage Plaque was unveiled in Levy's honour on her childhood home at Twyford House, Elwood Street, in
Highbury in March 2020, at a ceremony attended by her husband Bill Mayblin and family members, Islington Councillors, Baroness
Lola Young, and other friends.
Royal Society of Literature pen collection
In November 2020 it was announced that Levy would be the first writer of colour whose pen would join the
Royal Society of Literature's historic collection, which includes pens belonging to
George Eliot and
Lord Byron
George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January 1788 – 19 April 1824), known simply as Lord Byron, was an English romantic poet and Peerage of the United Kingdom, peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and h ...
.
Personal life and death
Levy was married to Bill Mayblin.
She died on 14 February 2019, aged 62,
after living with
metastatic breast cancer for 15 years, and her ashes were buried on the eastern side of
Highgate Cemetery.
Awards and honours
*2004:
Orange Prize for Fiction, winner, ''Small Island''
*2004:
Whitbread Book of the Year, winner, ''Small Island''
*2005:
Commonwealth Writers Prize
Commonwealth Foundation presented a number of prizes between 1987 and 2011. The main award was called the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was composed of two prizes: the Best Book Prize (overall and regional) was awarded from 1987 to 2011; the Bes ...
, winner, ''Small Island''
[ ]
*2005: Elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature (RSL) is a learned society founded in 1820, by George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV, to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". A charity that represents the voice of literature in the UK, th ...
*2010:
Man Booker Prize, shortlist, ''The Long Song''
*2011:
Walter Scott Prize (''The Long Song'')
*2012: Honorary Fellowship of
Queen Mary University of London
Bibliography
*''Every Light in the House Burnin′'' (1994).
Headline Publishing, .
*''Never Far from Nowhere'' (1996). Headline, .
*''Fruit of the Lemon'' (1999). Review Publishing, .
*''
Small Island'' (2004). Review Publishing, .
*''
The Long Song'' (2010). Headline Publishing, .
*''Six Stories and an Essay'' (2014). Tinder Press, .
Further reading
*Blake, Robin. Review of ''Every Light in the House Burnin, by Andrea Levy. ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publishe ...
''. 19 February 1995. 37.
*
Crampton, Robert. "England's White, Unpleasant Land". Review of ''Never Far from Nowhere'', by Andrea Levy. ''
The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' ...
''. 10 February 1996. WE/13.
*Foster, Aisling. "On Being British". Review of ''Every Light in the House Burnin, by Andrea Levy. ''The Independent''. 27 November 1994: 38.
*Gui, Weihsin. "Post-Heritage Narratives: Migrancy and Traveling Theory in V. S. Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival and Andrea Levy's Fruit of the Lemon". ''
Journal of Commonwealth Literature'' 47.1 (2012): 73–89.
*
*Medovarski, Andrea. I Knew This Was England': Myths of Return in Andrea Levy's Fruit of the Lemon". ''
MaComère'' 8 (2006): 35–66.
*Perfect, Michael. Fold the Paper and Pass It On': Historical Silences and the Contrapuntal in Andrea Levy's Fiction". ''
Journal of Postcolonial Writing
The ''Journal of Postcolonial Writing'' (from 1973 to 2004 titled ''World Literature Written in English'') is a peer-reviewed academic journal publishing work that examines the interface between the economic forces commodifying culture and postcolo ...
'' 46.1 (2010): 31–41.
*Shumway, Jacob Holt
Laughter Is Part of My War Effort': The Harmonizing and Humanizing Influences of Laughter in Andrea Levy's Small Island"(thesis),
Brigham Young University, 2018.
*Toplu, Şebnem
"Home(land) or 'Motherland': Transnational Identities in Andrea Levy's Fruit of the Lemon" ''
Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal'' 3.1 (2005).
*Welsh, Sarah Lawson
"Andrea Levy: her important body of work set out what it is to be black and British" ''
The Conversation'', 18 February 2019.
References
External links
*
*
Interview with Andrea Levy City Lit. 30 July 2010.
*
Younge, Gary (30 January 2010)
I started to realise what fiction could be. And I thought, wow! You can take on the world(interview). ''The Guardian''.
*
Greer, Bonnie (31 January 2004)
"Empire's child: Andrea Levy on Small Island"(interview). ''The Guardian''.
*Barranger, Nicola
"Andrea Levy – Addressing the Question of Slavery" ''NewBooks''.
Andrea Levyat
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the Briti ...
.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Levy, Andrea
1956 births
2019 deaths
20th-century English novelists
20th-century English women writers
21st-century English novelists
21st-century English women writers
Alumni of Middlesex University
Black British women writers
Black Jewish people
Burials at Highgate Cemetery
Deaths from breast cancer
Deaths from cancer in England
English people of Jamaican descent
English people of Jewish descent
English people of Scottish descent
Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature
Walter Scott Prize winners
Women historical novelists
Writers from London