Blonde Roots

From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other

By: Bernardine Evaristo

Narrated by: Charlotte Beaumont, Ben Arogundade

Brought to you by Penguin.

FROM THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER

RECIPIENT OF THE WOMEN’S PRIZE OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTION AWARD

Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris, from England, is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the hold of a slave-ship sailing to the New World . . .

In this fantastically imaginative inversion of the transatlantic slave trade - in which 'whytes' are enslaved by black people - Bernardine Evaristo has created a thought-provoking satire that is as accessible and readable as it is intelligent and insightful. Blonde Roots brings the shackles and cries of long-ago barbarity uncomfortably close and raises timely questions about the society of today.

'A bold and brilliant game of counterfactual history. Evaristo keep[s] 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

LONGLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2009
WINNER OF THE ORANGE YOUTH PANEL AWARD 2009
FINALIST FOR THE HURSTON WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD 2010

© Bernadine Evaristo 2008 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

Critic reviews

A hugely imaginative tale that invites important debates, challenging fundamental perceptions of race, culture and history

This brilliant novel will fulfil [Evaristo's] purpose of making readers view the transatlantic slave trade with fresh eyes

A phenomenal book. It is so ingenious and so novel. Think The Handmaid's Tale meets Noughts and Crosses with a bit of Jonathan Swift and Lewis Carroll thrown in. This should be thought of as a feminist classic.

Reimagines past and present with refreshing humour and intelligence . . . human and real

[Blonde Roots] is a powerful gesture of fearless thematic ownership by one of the UK's most unusual and challenging writers

As with a Swiftean satire, Evaristo's novel is powerful not for its fantastical elements but for its ability to bring home the horror of historical events

Bafflingly pointless

I made a mistake. A friend recommended Bernardine Evaristo and I clearly should have started with something else, likely the always highlighted "Girl, Woman, Other" ... alas, I saw what Blonde Roots was about, and was instantly intrigued. The idea was promising, for sure: What if the whole world of slavery had been turned upside down, a complete reversal where black people ruled and white people were the slave race. What would such a world have looked like? How would it have been?

Turns out - exactly the same. Exactly. There was no point to this story. None. Everything you know about slavery is, in this book, just as you've known it to be. The abductions, the slave ships, the abuse, the plantations - every horrible truth. It's just that black people are the masters, the slave traders, the violators - and white people are the victims. If all's the same, what's the point? There was nothing new to tell, nothing that was different. The story gives us two points of view, that of a white female slave, her life and escapes, and that of a black leader/slaver, his life and views. Switch skin colors and it would have been a straight-forward tale of slavery times. As a story, it was decent - but I guess it only became something that stood out by switching races, and by attempting to be satirical and 'clever' with similar yet altered naming conventions (such as niggers are now called wiggers).

I was so ready to love this story ... there's nothing clever about Blonde Roots, it's simply a photographic negative of what really happened - and has been told many times in unforgettable ways - instead of this, read Alex Haley's Roots and spend real time with Kunta Kinte.