Lara: The Family Is Like Water - Brossura

Evaristo, Bernardine

Brossura

ISBN 10: 1852248319 ISBN 13: 9781852248314

Casa editrice: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, 2009

Riassunto

Lara is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse based on Bernardine Evaristo's own childhood and family history. The eponymous Lara is a mixed-race girl raised in Woolwich, a white suburb of London, during the 60s and 70s. Her father, Taiwo, is Nigerian, and her mother, Ellen, is white British. They marry in the 1950s, in spite of fierce opposition from Ellen's family, and quickly produce eight children in ten years. Lara is their fourth child and we follow her journey from restricted childhood to conflicted early adulthood, and then from London to Nigeria to Brazil as she seeks to understand herself and her ancestry.
The novel travels back over 150 years, seven generations and three continents of Lara's ancestry. It is the story of Irish Catholics leaving generations of rural hardship behind and ascending to a rigid middle class in England; of German immigrants escaping poverty and seeking to build a new life in 19th century London; and of proud Yorubas enslaved in Brazil, free in colonial Nigeria and hopeful in post-war London. Lara explores the lives of those who leave one country in search of a better life elsewhere, but who end up struggling to be accepted even as they lay the foundations for their children and future generations.
This is a new edition of Bernardine Evaristo's first novel Lara, rewritten and expanded since its first publication in 1997.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

LARA is a wonderful piece - extraordinarily beautiful - rich and evocative - fascinating in its span of time and continents. Like all the best writing, by the end I felt not only a little older, but a lot wiser. --Andrea Levy

A short, lyrical, vividly real novel-in-verse, dipping 150 years into the past to explore the family history of a British woman with a Nigerian father and English mother. It's funny, touching, informative, passionate and very easy to read. If you're tired of novels that all seem the same, this one's a complete original. --Daily Telegraph (Books of the Year)

Adventurous, compelling and utterly original. --The Times on Bernardine Evaristo

L'autore:

Bernardine Evaristo was born and raised in London, where she still lives. She has published four cross-genre novels: Lara (new edition, Bloodaxe Books, 2009); Blonde Roots (Penguin, 2008), a prose novel in which Africans enslave Europeans; a novel-with-verse, Soul Tourists (Penguin, 2005), which featured ghosts of colours including Pushkin, Shakespeare's Dark Lady of the Sonnets and Alessandro dei Medici; and The Emperor's Babe (Penguin, 2001), a verse novel about a black girl growing up in Roman London nearly 2000 years ago. She co-edited the Granta new writing anthology NW15 in 2007 with novelist Maggie Gee; has written short fiction and drama for BBC radio and literary criticism for the Guardian, Times and Independent; and is an Associate Editor of the international literature magazine Wasafiri. She has taken part in over 60 international tours as a writer. See http://www.bevaristo.net http://www.bevaristo.wordpress.com

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Bloodaxe Books Ltd
• Data di pubblicazione: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1852248319
• ISBN 13: 9781852248314
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 192