The Long Song

Soon to be a major BBC drama starring Tamara Lawrance, Hayley Atwell and Lenny Henry, and shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, The Long Song is a hauntingly beautiful, heartbreaking and unputdownable novel, for those who loved Homegoing or The Underground Railroad.

'A marvel of luminous storytelling' Financial Times.

"You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages.

As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed. July is a slave girl who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity and it is her life that is the subject of this tale. She was there when the Baptist War raged in 1831, and she was present when slavery was declared no more.

All this he wishes me to pen so the reader can decide if this is a novel they might care to consider. Cha, I tell my son, what fuss-fuss. Come, let them just read it for themselves."