Andrea Levy Wins Orange Prize for Fiction 2004.

Entertainment Editors/Business Editors

LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 2004

British author Andrea Levy has won the Orange Prize for Fiction 2004 with her fourth novel Small Island (Review), a tale about the experience of Jamaican migration to London after the Second World War. Chair of Judges, Sandi Toksvig, presented the GBP 30,000 prize and the 'Bessie', a limited edition bronze figurine, to the author at a party in central London. Both are anonymously endowed.

Sandi Toksvig, Chair of Judges, said: "Small Island is an astonishing tour de force by Andrea Levy. Juggling four voices, she illuminates a little known aspect of recent British history with wit and wisdom. A compassionate account of the problems of post war immigration, it cannot fail to have a strong modern resonance."

Niamh Byrne, Head of UK PR and Sponsorship at Orange commented: "The Orange Prize for Fiction is one of the most challenging, controversial and dynamic literary prizes. Orange is very proud of this inspiring international prize. Congratulations to Andrea Levy."

The Orange Prize For Fiction was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction written by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible. The Orange Prize is awarded to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman.

The judges for the 2004 Orange Prize are:

-- Sandi Toksvig, Broadcaster, comedian and author (Chair)

-- Karen Cunningham, Head of Libraries, Information and Learning,

Glasgow City Council

-- Baroness Helena Kennedy, QC

-- Katharine Viner, Editor of Guardian Weekend

-- Minette Walters, Author

Andrea Levy was born in England to Jamaican parents. She is the author of Every Light in the House Burnin', Never Far from Nowhere and Fruit of the Lemon, all of which were critically acclaimed. She has been a judge for the Orange Prize for Fiction, is a recipient of an Arts Council Writer's Award, and lives and works in London.

Small Island

It is 1948 in an England that is still shaken by war. At 21 Nevern Street, London, Queenie Bligh takes into her house lodgers who have recently arrived from Jamaica. She feels she has no choice. Her husband, Bernard, whom she married to escape her dreary upbringing on a farm in the Midlands, was posted to India with the RAF during the war, but when the conflict was over he did not return. What else could she do?

Among her tenants are Gilbert and his new wife Hortense. Gilbert Joseph was one of the several thousand Jamaican men who joined the RAF to fight against Hitler. Returning to England after the war he finds himself treated very differently now that he is no longer in a blue uniform. It is desperation that makes him remember a wartime friendship with Queenie and knock on her door.

Hortense shared Gilbert's dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England to start a better life - that's why she married him. But when she at last joins her husband, she is shocked by London's shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was.

Queenie's neighbours do not approve of her choice of tenants, and neither would her husband, were he there. England may be recovering from a war but at 21 Nevern Street it has only just begun.

Through the stories of these people, Small Island explores a point in England's past when the country began to change. In this delicately wrought and profoundly moving novel, Andrea Levy handles the weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, with a lightness of touch and a generosity of spirit that challenge and uplift the reader.

Previous winners of the Orange Prize for Fiction are Helen Dunmore for A Spell of Winter (1996), Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces (1997), Carol Shields for Larry's Party (1998), Suzanne Berne for A Crime in the Neighborhood (1999), Linda Grant for When I Lived in Modern Times (2000), Kate Grenville for Idea of Perfection (2001) Ann Patchett for Bel Canto (2002) and Valerie Martin for Property (2003).

For further information on the Orange Prize for Fiction, please contact:

Amanda Johnson/ Lucy Avery at Trimedia Communications:

Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone]

Email: [e-mail]

Or Stuart Campbell, Orange Media Centre

Tel: [phone]

Email: mailto:[e-mail]

If you would like to set up an interview with Andrea Levy after 8th June, please contact:

Georgina Moore at Review on 020 7873 6102

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