We explain who she was and what her achievements were.
Award-winning British author Andrea Levy has died aged 62
Who was Andrea Levy?
Andrea Levy was born on March 7, 1956 in London to Jamaican parents who had come to England on the Empire Windrush in 1948.
She grew up in a council flat in North London – stone’s throw away from the Arsenal stadium.
Her parents were Jamaican-born of mixed descent –with both black, Scottish and Jewish grandparents.
In 1968, she passed the 11-plus and attended the prestigious Highbury Hill Grammar School.
Sharing a small flat with six people, Levy’s parents wanted to integrate and reject black identity.
Her first job she worked on BBC Two drams Unity as a costume assistant and through her experience of being discriminated against she decided to do a creative writing class.
Levy developed her voice and wrote of her Caribbean heritage.
She went on to become a successful award-winning writer before dying after being diagnosed with an incurable breast cancer 15 years ago.
What are her most famous works?
Levy drew on her own mixed-race, working class experiences to bring to light the black British experience.
Levy is best known for Small Island and The Long Song.
Small Island is about two Jamaicans who came to England after World War Two.
The Long Song was her last novel and unlike her other four novels, which were set in post-war Britain, it was set in early 19th century Jamaica during the final years of slavery.
What are her achievements?
Levy has won multiple awards over the course of her writing career.
They are:
- 2004: Orange Prize for Fiction, winner, Small Island
- 2004: Whitbread Book of the Year, winner, Small Island
- 2005: Commonwealth Writers Prize, winner, Small Island
- 2010: Man Booker Prize, shortlist, The Long Song
- 2011: Walter Scott Prize, winner, The Long Song
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