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Titulo: The Long Song
Autor: Andrea Levy
Origem: Inglaterra
Ano da edição original: 2010
Editora: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Páginas: 313
Língua original: Inglês
ISBN: 0374192170

Sinopse: Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation in Jamaica, July lives with her mother until Mrs. Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her “Marguerite.”

Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist war, followed by the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her “freedom.” It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son’s persistent questioning, July’s resilience and heartbreak are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love.

A autora e a obra: Este é o segundo livro de Andrea Levy que coloco nesta rubrica. Uma autora inglesa de 58 anos, filha de pais jamaicanos que tenho muita curiosidade em ler. Nenhum dos seus 5 romances está editado em Portugal. Com este The Long Song, a autora venceu o Walter Scott Prize, sendo ainda nomeada para o Man Booker Prize, International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award e Orange Prize for Fiction.

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E aqui vos deixo mais um livrinho que gostaria muito de ver traduzido para português. Sei que é possível encontrar por aí uma edição em português do Brasil, mas para mim não é de todo a mesma coisa. Só gosto de ler um livro em português do Brasil quando é essa a origem do autor.

Titulo: Small Island
Autor: Andrea Levy
Origem: Inglaterra
Ano da edição original: 2004
Editora: Headline Review
Páginas: 560
Língua original: Inglês
ISBN: 9780755307500

Sinopse: It is 1948 in an England that is still shaken by war. At 21 Nevern Street, London, Queenie Bligh takes into her house lodgers who have recently arrived from Jamaica. She feels she has no choice. Her husband, Bernard, who she married to escape her dreary upbringing on a farm in the Midlands, was posted to India with the RAF during the war, but when the conflict was over he did not return. What else could she do?
Among her tenants are Gilbert and his new wife Hortense. Gilbert Josesph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England after the war he finds himself treated very differently now that he is no longer in a blue uniform. It is desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock at her door.
Hortense shared Gilbert’s dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England to start a better life – that’s why she married him. But when she at last joins her husband, she is shocked by London’s shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was.
Queenie’s neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband, were he there. England may be recovering from a war but at 21 Nevern Street it has only just begun.

A autora e a obra: Andrea Levy é uma escritora inglesa, filha de pais jamaicanos que tal como as personagens do livro emigram para Inglaterra em 1948.  Andrea tem 58 anos e escreveu até hoje 5 romances nenhum dos quais editado em Portugal. Small Island ganhou o Orange Prize for Fiction e o Whitbread Book of the Year em 2004 e o Commonwealth Writers Prize em 2005. Foi ainda finalista do Book Critics Circle Award e do International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.