Andrea Levy

This groundbreaking study of one of the most significant writers of recent times offers comprehensive analyses of all five of Levy’s novels, and brings to light fascinating discoveries from her personal archive. An authoritative yet accessible account of her work, it argues that Levy is the greatest British novelist of her generation. ‘This is a significant book and represents sustained research of the highest quality. It is likely to be a landmark publication in future Levy, Black British, and postcolonial literary scholarship.’—Sarah Lawson Welsh, York St John UniversityDrawing on years of dedicated archival research, Andrea Levy's Novels is a groundbreaking study of one of the most significant writers of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries. Leading Levy expert Dr Michael Perfect provides comprehensive analyses of all five of Levy’s novels, from early texts based on her own experiences to her later, more historically focused masterworks, Small Island and The Long Song. In addition to exploring Levy’s writing from a range of literary-critical perspectives, each chapter features a dedicated section that takes a more literary-biographical approach, bringing to light fascinating discoveries from Levy’s personal archive. New insights are given into Levy’s ambitions, her influences, her research methods, her writing practices, and her feelings about her extraordinary career. Charting Levy’s rise from humble beginnings to literary luminary, Perfect’s account is authoritative yet accessible, scholarly yet personal. He argues that this black, working-class woman – who grew up in council housing, whose family were destitute a few years before she was born, and who did not read a work of literary fiction until she was twenty-three years old – became the greatest British novelist of her generation. In this groundbreaking study of one of the most significant writers of recent times, leading Levy expert Dr Michael Perfect offers comprehensive analyses of all five of Levy’s novels, and brings to light fascinating discoveries from her personal archive. Perfect’s account is authoritative yet accessible, scholarly yet personal. As well as exploring her writing from a range of literary-critical perspectives, the book charts Levy’s rise from humble beginnings to literary luminary, and argues that she is the greatest British novelist of her generation.