Victor Headley (born 1959) is a

Jamaica Jamaica (; ) is an island country situated in the Caribbean Sea. Spanning in area, it is the third-largest island of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean (after Cuba and Hispaniola). Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, and west of His ...

n-born British author. He is the author of the bestselling novel ''

Yardie Yardie (or Yaadi) is a term often used, particularly within the Caribbean expatriate and Jamaican diaspora, to refer to people of Jamaican origin, though its exact meaning changes depending on context. The term is derived from the Jamaican pa ...

'' (1992), which gained cult status upon publication and "heralded a new wave of black British pulp fiction". Other books by Headley include ''Excess'' (1993) ''Yush'' (1994), ''Fetish'' (1995), ''Here Comes the Bride'' (1997), ''Off Duty'' (2001) and ''Seven Seals'' (2003).

Biography

Born in Jamaica, Headley came to live in London at the age of 12 and after leaving school had a variety of jobs, from market stallholder to songwriter/band member, journalist to hospital courier. Headley's attempts to write a screenplay became his first novel, ''Yardie'', which describes the life of a Jamaican courier carrying cocaine from Jamaica to London. The book helped to launch X Press, a black-owned publishing company co-founded in 1992 by

Dotun Adebayo Oludotun Davey Moore "Dotun" Adebayo (born 25 August 1959) is a British radio presenter, writer, and publisher. He is best known for his work on '' Up All Night'' on BBC Radio 5 Live, as well as the obituary programme ''Brief Lives''. Early ...

and Steve Pope. Headley has sold more than half a million copies across five titles, in five languages worldwide. Headley's ''Yardie'' has been adapted as a feature film of the same name, released in 2018. In 2017, actor

Idris Elba Idrissa Akuna Elba (; born 6 September 1972) is an English actor.

announced the book as the vehicle for his directorial debut, with

Aml Ameen Aml Eysan Ameen (; born 30 July 1985) is a British actor. He is best known for his roles as Trevor (Trife) in ''Kidulthood'' (2006), Lewis Hardy in the ITV television series ''The Bill'', Capheus in the first season of the Netflix original se ...

starring as the main character "D". Also starring are British actors Mark Smith and Naomi Ackie.

Other sources

* Dyer, Rebecca (2004). Generations of Black Londoners: Echoes of 1950's Caribbean Migrants' Voices in Victor Headley's ''Yardie'' and Zadie Smith's ''White Teeth''. ''Obsidian III: Literature in the African Diaspora'', 5(2), 81–102. * Farred, Grant (Winter 2001). "The Postcolonial Chickens Come Home to Roost: How ''Yardie'' Has Created a New Postcolonial Subaltern", ''The South Atlantic Quarterly'' 100.1 (2001), 287–305. * Howe, Darcus. "The Yardie Has Been Invented by White Journalists", ''New Statesman'' (2 August 1999).

References

External links

Black writing Introduction

Victor Headley Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Headley, Victor 1959 births Living people Black British writers British crime fiction writers 20th-century British novelists 21st-century British novelists British male novelists Jamaican emigrants to the United Kingdom 20th-century British male writers 21st-century British male writers