Bernardine Evaristo is the 2019 winner of the Booker Prize for Girl, Woman, Other, which was a national bestseller and a winner and finalist for many awards including the Women's Prize for Fiction and the Dublin Literary Award. Evaristo is the author of seven other books that explore aspects of the African diaspora. Her writing spans verse fiction, short fiction, poetry, essays, literary criticism, and drama. Evaristo is President of the Royal Society of Literature, Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, and an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. She received an OBE in 2020, and lives in London with her husband. Her most recent book is Manifesto: On Never Giving Up.
@BernardineEvari
www.bevaristo.com
Praise for Manifesto: Named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Kirkus
Reviews (Nonfiction), and Washington Independent Review of
Books
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
Named a Most Anticipated Book of 2022 by Time, Kirkus Reviews, and
Literary Hub"The sturdy, exuberant memoir of a writer who, in
pushing herself, also pushed an entire field . . . a
behind-the-scenes companion text that goes down smoothly . . .
Manifesto offers an irresistibly paradoxical invitation to writers:
Create a literature of those left behind, by letting your heart run
free."--Quiara Alegría Hudes, New York Times Book Review"Manifesto,
which could otherwise be called Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Black Woman, is a much needed accounting of a Black woman's coming
of age through the journey of creating a profoundly authentic
creative life . . . Evaristo's life as detailed in Manifesto is the
story of dreams made real through an unshakeable belief in the self
despite the naysaying noise of the world . . . Manifesto revels in
the stories behind Evaristo's writing--the formation of each book
as well as the formation of the artist engaged in the act of
creation . . . A nonfiction bildungsroman that is a towering
monument to the creative life of Black women."--Hope Wabuke, NPR"In
a new memoir, [Evaristo] describes how she was long excluded from
the halls of literary power, and how she finally broke in . . . She
mixes humor with the most difficult of subjects--slavery,
prejudice, trauma--and happily combines eras and languages."--Anna
Russell, New Yorker"Reimagines memoir as a manual for creativity,
activism, and reinvention."--Seattle Times"Evaristo's long,
persistent journey to becoming a lauded novelist is inspiring,
especially for any writer who's struggled to get a story published
. . . In Manifesto, Evaristo takes her own advice, producing a
thoughtful, vivid, often funny work of nonfiction that refuses to
play it safe."--BookPage"Part memoir and part meditation on
determination, creativity, and activism . . . A beautiful ode to
determination and daring and an intimate look at one of our finest
writers."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"What a fascinating life Evaristo has led . . . An inspiring yet
unassuming memoir from a woman of indomitable creative
energy."--Booklist (starred review)
"In lithe prose, [Evaristo] tackles her complicated relationship
with sexuality, reminisces on hustling her early books into
readers' hands and finding 'a room of my own' in her writing later
in life, and dispenses advice on cultivating creativity and
intergenerational consciousness . . . Readers will find much to
ruminate over in this meditation on the power of art and
persistence."--Publishers Weekly"Fans of Evaristo's work will
discover in Manifesto the passionate core of this unstoppable force
in 21st-century literature . . . Evaristo's personal manifesto,
summarized at the end of this remarkable book, is ripe with
inspiration for those who come after her, her advice timeless and
applicable to readers at every stage of their artistic endeavors .
. . A Booker Prize-winning British author's soulful memoir captures
the essence of her creativity and offers inspirational guidance to
emerging writers."--Shelf Awareness"If 'perseverance is genius in
disguise, ' then Bernardine Evaristo is a 22-carat gold,
diamond-encrusted genius. She is the patron saint of persistence
and proves it with her ninth book, Manifesto."--Kitty Kelley,
Washington Independent Review of Books"The most striking feature of
this moving and enjoyable book is [Evaristo's] fearless openness.
When the publishing world looked closed to her she prised it open
with her daring fiction."―Sunday Times"A rallying cry . . .
Manifesto combines the personal with the practical to powerful
effect . . . Unconventional as it may be, the format works: the
autobiographical parts of the book serve as vivid lessons about the
power of change, growth and self-confidence . . . Entertaining as
well as instructive."--Guardian"Lively and important . . .
[Evaristo] is unfailingly generous in delineating how she became
herself . . . She is determined not to pull up the ladder behind
her and is also, often wickedly funny . . . How I wish when I was
18 that someone--if not necessarily my school--had thrust Manifesto
into my hands."--Evening Standard"Shimmers with unfailing
self-belief and a strong vein of humility . . . Manifesto's
subtitle is 'On Never Giving Up.' A better advert for this maxim
you could not find."--Susie Boyt, Spectator Praise for Girl, Woman,
Other: NATIONAL BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019
Named One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2019
Named Roxane Gay's Favorite Book of 2019
Named a Best Book of the Year by the New Yorker, Washington Post,
NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Vogue, and many others
Named an Amazon Best Book of the Year
Named Author of the Year by the British Book Awards
Winner of the Indie Book Award for Fiction (UK) and the British
Fiction Book of the Year Award "Girl, Woman, Other received half a
Booker Prize, but it deserves all the glory . . . A breathtaking
symphony of Black women's voices, a clear-eyed survey of
contemporary challenges that's nevertheless wonderfully
life-affirming . . . Together, all these women present a
cross-section of Britain that feels godlike in its scope and
insight." --Ron Charles, Washington Post "The ambition of this
novel, the inventive structure and syntax, the grand scope, all
make for the most absorbing book I read all year. The characters
are so richly drawn, so intimately known by Evaristo, and so
perfectly rendered on the page. This novel is a master class in
storytelling. It is absolutely unforgettable. When I turned the
final page, I felt the ache of having to leave the world Evaristo
created but I also felt the excitement of getting to read the book
all over again. It should have won the Booker alone. It deserves
all the awards and then some." --Roxane Gay, Gay Magazine "A big,
busy novel with a large root system . . . Evaristo has a gift for
appraising the lives of her characters with sympathy and grace
while gently skewering some of their pretensions . . . Evaristo's
lines are long, like Walt Whitman's or Allen Ginsberg's, and there
are no periods at the ends of them. There's a looseness to her tone
that gives this novel its buoyancy. Evaristo's wit helps too."
--Dwight Garner, New York Times "Exuberant, capacious, and engaging
. . . Complex, astute, painful, funny, enlightening, and most of
all enjoyable . . . An elegant and compulsively readable account of
the Black women of England . . . Plumbing the many dimensions of
her characters' lives, Evaristo revels in universals and
singularities alike . . . The final scene triumphantly pulls
together the novel's dominant themes. I laughed, I cried, I turned
the last page fully satisfied." --Rebecca Steinitz, Boston Globe "A
sprawling book, but too intimate to be considered an epic . . .
Each of these characters--and indeed the doting spouses, or abusive
girlfriends, or foul-mouthed school chums, or lecherous preachers,
or the rest of the human parade--feels specific, and vibrant, and
not quite complete, insofar as the best fictional characters remain
as elusive and surprising as real people are. This is a feat; the
whole book is . . . Evaristo is a gifted portraitist, and you
marvel at both the people she conjures and the unexpected way she
reveals them to you . . . Yes, prizes are silly. But sometimes
they're deserved." --Rumaan Alam, New Republic "[Girl, Woman, Other
is] about almost everything. Politics, parenthood, sexuality,
racism and colorism, immigration, domestic violence, infidelity,
friendship, love, all the ways we misunderstand each other, the way
life surprises us with its unfolding. This is a partial list . . .
Bernardine is here to turn on the lights, give you your money's
worth, and let you decide for yourself." --Marion Winik,
Minneapolis Star-Tribune "Deserves every accolade, and more . . . A
creative and technical marvel--a sprawling, unpunctuated, and
improbably joyful account of twelve interconnected characters in
modern-day Britain . . . A book so bursting with wit, empathy, and
insight, its clear-eyed reflections on race and feminism hardly
ever feel like polemics; there's too much pure, vivid life on every
page." --Entertainment Weekly "Girl, Woman, Other changed my
thinking." --Tom Stoppard, Times Literary Supplement "Not just one
of my favorite books of this year, but one of the most insightful
books I've ever had the pleasure of reading . . . Inspired."
--Nicola Sturgeon, Guardian "Magnificent . . . As she creates a
space for immigrants and the children of immigrants to tell their
stories, Evaristo explores a range of topics both contemporary and
timeless. There is room for everyone to find a home in this
extraordinary novel. Beautiful and necessary." --Kirkus Reviews
(starred review) "Evaristo beguiles with her exceptional depictions
of a range of experiences of Black British women . . . A stunning
powerhouse of vibrant characters and heartbreaks." --Publishers
Weekly (starred review) "Courageous . . . Hearing from mothers and
their children, teachers and their students across generations,
readers might expect that they'll get to see just what these
characters can't know about one another, but they won't imagine the
dazzling specificities nor the unspooling dramas; they will be
entertained, educated, and riveted." --Booklist (starred review)
"Girl, Woman, Other, the intermingling stories of generations of
Black British women told in a gloriously rich and readable free
verse, will surely be seen as a landmark in British fiction."
--Guardian "In Girl, Woman, Other, Evaristo adopts an even bigger
canvas, with a sparkling new novel of interconnected stories . . .
In Evaristo's eighth book she continues to expand and enhance our
literary canon. If you want to understand modern day Britain, this
is the writer to read." --New Statesman "Brims with vitality . . .
The form [Evaristo] chooses here is breezily dismissive of
convention. The flow of this prose-poetry hybrid feels absolutely
right, with the pace and layout of words matched to the lilt and
intonation of the characters' voices . . . She captures the shared
experience that make us, as she puts it in her dedication, members
of the human family." --Financial Times "The voices of Black women
come to the fore in a swirl of interrelated stories that cover the
past century of British life. Wide-ranging, witty and wise, it's a
book that does new things with the novel form." --Sunday Times
"This masterful novel is a choral love song to Black womanhood."
--Elle (UK)
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
