Bernardine Evaristo - Manifesto and other works (20 books)

BERNARDINE EVARISTO (b. 1959) is a British-Nigerian author and academic whose work ranges from poetry, verse-novels, a novel-with-verse, a novella, short stories, prose novels, radio and theatre drama, and literary essays and criticism.

Evaristo's writing is characterised by experimentation, daring, subversion and challenging the myths of various Afro-diasporic histories and identities.  She notably plays with form and narrative perspective, often merging the past with the present, fiction with poetry, the factual with the speculative, and reality with alternate realities.  Her verse novel THE EMPEROR'S BABE (Penguin, 2001) is about a black teenage girl, whose parents are from Nubia, coming of age in Roman London nearly 2,000 years ago.  SOUL TOURISTS (2005), about a mismatched couple driving across Europe to the Middle East, featured ghosts of real figures of colour from European history.  Her novel BLONDE ROOTS (2008) is a satire that inverts the history of the transatlantic slave trade and replaces it with a universe where Africans enslave Europeans.

Her eighth novel, GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER (2019), is an innovative polyvocal "fusion fiction" about 12 primarily black British women, charting their hopes, struggles and intersecting lives.  The book won the won the 2019 Booker Prize jointly with Margaret Atwood's "The Testaments", making Evaristo the first black woman and the first black British person to win it.

MANIFESTO: ON NEVER GIVING UP (2021) is a vibrant and inspirational account of Evaristo’s life and career as she rebelled against the mainstream and fought over several decades to bring her creative work into the world.  With her characteristic humor, Evaristo describes her childhood as one of eight siblings, with a Nigerian father and white Catholic mother, tells the story of how she helped set up Britain’s first Black women’s theatre company, and recounts her determination to write books that were absent in the literary world around her.  She provides a hugely powerful perspective to contemporary conversations around race, class, feminism, sexuality, and aging.

In October 2020 it was announced that Evaristo would be curating a new book series, BLACK BRITAIN: WRITING BACK , which involves bringing back into print and circulation books from the past, and for which she would write new introductions.  Seven of the volumes issued so far are included here, ranging from literary thrillers to historical fiction.

A staunch and longstanding activist and advocate for the inclusion of artists and writers of colour, Bernardine has initiated several successful schemes to ensure increased representation in the creative industries.  Her life and work was recently profiled by Alan Yentob in the documentary "Bernardine Evaristo: Never Give Up" (BBC Imagine, 2021).


The following books are in ePUB format:

== FICTION ==

* Blonde Roots (Penguin, 2020)
* Emperor's Babe, The (Penguin, 2017)
* Girl, Woman, Other (Grove, 2019)
* Girl, Woman, Other (Penguin, 2019)
* Hello Mum (Penguin, 2010)
* Lara (Bloodaxe, 2014)
* Mr. Loverman (Akashic, 2014)
* Soul Tourists (Penguin, 2020)

== SHORT STORIES ==

* "On Top of the World," in New Daughters of Africa, ed. Busby (Amistad, 2019)
* "Yoruba Man Walking," in Closure, ed. J. Ross (Peepal Tree, 2015)

== POETRY ==

* Ten: New Poets (Bloodaxe, 2014). B. Evaristo & D. Nagra, eds.

== NON-FICTION ==

* Manifesto: On Never Giving Up (Grove, 2022)
* "What a Time to be a (Black) (British) (Womxn) Writer" in Brave New Words, ed. S. Nasta (Myriad, 2019)

== BLACK BRITAIN: WRITING BACK [introduced by Evaristo] ==

* Bryan, Judith - Bernard and the Cloth Monkey (Penguin, 2021)
* James, C.L.R. - Minty Alley (Penguin, 2021)
* Martin, S.I. - Incomparable World (Penguin, 2021)
* Phillips, Mike - The Dancing Face (Penguin, 2021)
* Pool, Hannah Azieb - My Fathers' Daughter (Penguin, 2022)
* Roy, Jacqueline - The Fat Lady Sings (Penguin, 2021)
* Williams, Nicola - Without Prejudice (Penguin, 2021)


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