Barrington Jedidiah Walker is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he’s lived in Hackney since the sixties. A flamboyant, wise-cracking local character with a dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for quoting Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father and grandfather – but he is also secretly homosexual, lovers with his great childhood friend Morris.

His deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barrington wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away?

Mr Loverman is a groundbreaking exploration of Britain’s older Caribbean community, which explodes cultural myths and fallacies and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.

‘One of Britain’s most innovative authors … Bernardine Evaristo always dares to be different’ New Nation

‘Evaristo remains an undeniably bold and energetic writer, whose world view is anything but one-dimensional’ Sunday Times

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BERNARDINE EVARISTO

BLONDE ROOTS

Imagine if the transatlantic slave trade were reversed.

Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves …

Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugar-cane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun. But though she lives in chains, Doris dreams of escape – of returning home to England and those she loves …

‘A bold and brilliant game of counter-factual history. Evaristo keeps her wit and anger at a spicy simmer throughout’ Daily Telegraph

‘So human and real. Re-imagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence’ Guardian

‘A brilliant satire whose flashes of comedy make the underlying tragedy all the more poignant’ Scotland on Sunday

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BERNARDINE EVARISTO

THE EMPEROR’S BABE

Londinium, AD 211

Meet Zuleika: sassy girl-about-town, hellraiser, the feisty and precocious daughter of Sudanese immigrants, now married off to a rich, fat, absent Roman and stranded in luxurious neglect. Until one day, that is, when the Emperor himself comes to town bringing with him not just love, but danger, too …

Dazzling, brilliant, streetwise and audacious, The Emperor’s Babe has been hailed as one of the most original novels of recent years.

‘Readable, sexy, delicious … I loved this book!’
Helen Dunmore

‘A glittering fiction whose words leap off the page into life. Brilliant’
The Times

‘Youthful and daring, with hidden depths of wisdom and hilarity’
Independent

‘Manages to move the reader from laughter towards tears. Unforgettable’
Daily Telegraph

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BERNARDINE EVARISTO

GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020