Andrea Levy - Small Island

05/12/12 • 53 min

Andrea Levy discusses her novel Small Island with a studio audience, and the author revisits the West London setting of her multi-prize-winning novel.

A thought-provoking tale of love, friendship and immigration set in Earl's Court in 1948, Small Island focuses on the diaspora of Jamaican immigrants, who, escaping economic hardship on their own 'small island', move to England.

Once in the mother country, however, for which the men had fought and died for during World War II, their reception is not quite the warm embrace that they had hoped for.

Join Harriett Gilbert, readers in the studio and around the globe and Andrea Levy both in and out of the studio for World Book Club.

(Image: Author Andrea Levy)

Andrea Levy discusses her novel Small Island with a studio audience, and the author revisits the West London setting of her multi-prize-winning novel.

Once in the mother country, however, for which the men had fought and died for during World War II, their reception is not quite the warm embrace that they had hoped for.

Join Harriett Gilbert, readers in the studio and around the globe and Andrea Levy both in and out of the studio for World Book Club.

(Image: Author Andrea Levy)

Previous Episode

Peter Ackroyd - Hawksmoor

Coming up the first in our London Calling season of World Book Clubs which will be going out each Saturday over the next four weeks.

In the run up to the London Olympic games we'll be discussing four novels which focus on different aspects of the United Kingdom’s colourful and historic capital city.

This week we talk to acclaimed novelist, biographer and critic Peter Ackroyd who will be discussing his haunting Whitbread prize-winning novel, Hawksmoor, with an audience at St George's Church, Bloomsbury.

St George's is the final church designed by lauded architect of the English Baroque, Nicholas Hawksmoor, a central and sinister figure in this compelling murder mystery set amongst the labyrinthine streets of 18th Century London.

(Image: Peter Ackroyd)

Next Episode

Howard Jacobson - The Finkler Question

This week we've the third edition in our London Calling season of World Book Clubs which are going out each Saturday during May.

This week we're talking to Howard Jacobson at the first Soho Literary Festival in the heart of the UK capital about his dazzling Booker Prize-winning novel The Finkler Question.

A moving but often laugh-out-loud fictional foray into what it means to be Jewish Jacobson's award-winning novel features three old school friends who despite their very different lives have never quite lost touch.

Over dinner one balmy London evening they revisit a time before they had all loved and lost, unaware that an event later that night will change their lives for ever.