Girl, Woman, Other

From one of Britain's most celebrated writers of color, a magnificent portrayal of the intersections of identity among an interconnected group of Black British women

Longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, Girl, Woman, Other is a celebration of the diversity of Black British experience. Moving, hopeful, and inventive in its literary form, this extraordinary novel is a vivid portrait of the state of post-Brexit Britain that looks back to the legacy of Britain's colonial history in Africa and the Caribbean.

The twelve central characters of this multi-voiced novel lead vastly different lives: Amma is a newly acclaimed playwright whose work often explores her Black lesbian identity; her old friend Shirley is a teacher, jaded after decades of work in London's funding-deprived schools; Carole, one of Shirley's former students, works hard to earn a degree from Oxford and becomes an investment banker; Carole's mother Bummi works as a cleaner and worries about her daughter's lack of rootedness despite her obvious achievements. Other central characters include a nonbinary social media influencer, a 93-year-old woman living on a farm in Northern England, and a woman who retires to Barbados harboring a secret of sex and betrayal. Class, race, age, sexuality, and chance separate and connect this constellation of unforgettable characters, as Evaristo shows with great artistry how our worldview is inevitably shaped by our background and how we are all linked by the fabric of society.

Sparklingly witty and filled with emotion, centering voices we often see othered, and written in an innovative and fast-moving form that borrows from poetry, Girl, Woman, Other is a polyphonic and richly textured social novel that reminds us of everything that connects us to our neighbors, even in times when we are encouraged to be split apart.