Andrea Levy

The winner of both the 2004 Orange Prize and the 2005 Whitbread for her novel, Small Island....

Andrea Levy was born in London, England in 1956 to Jamaican parents. Her first three novels explored - from different perspectives - the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants.

Her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin' (1994), is the story of a Jamaican family living in London in the 1960s. Her second, Never Far From Nowhere (1996), is set during the 1970s and tells the story of two very different sisters living on a London council estate. In her third, Fruit of the Lemon (1999), Faith Jackson, a young black Londoner, visits Jamaica after suffering a nervous breakdown and discovers a previously unknown personal history.

Small Island, her fourth novel,( the historic winner of both the 2004 Orange Prize and the 2005 Whitbread Prize for Fiction), is set in 1948 and, through the stories of both English and Jamaican characters, it explores a point in England's past when the country began to change.

Fact file

Name: Andrea Levy

Date of birth: 1956

Place of birth: London

Current Home: London

Awards: Small Island is the winner of Orange Prize for Fiction, the Whitbread Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize.

Similar Authors: Roopa Farooki, Kiran Desai, Zadie Smith