About Me

(July, 2009: To my great delight ‘Blonde Roots’ made the Orange Prize Longlist, and then it was shortlisted for the Orange Youth Panel Award, which it won on June 2nd, 2009. I have also been awarded an MBE for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List, 2009,  announced on June 14th. It’s been quite some month. See relevant posts.)

I am a writer living in London, where I was born and raised. I’m of Nigerian and British parentage with bloodlines in other countries too, which I’ve written about in my semi-autobiographical verse novel LARA (Bloodaxe, October 29, 2009)

My published books include one prose novel, one novella, (Hello Mum, Penguin, 2010), two novels-in-verse and one novel-with-verse. Other produced and published works include poetry, short stories, radio and theatre drama. I also review books for the newspapers and write literary essays for various publications. (See My Books.)

My first prose novel BLONDE ROOTS was published by Penguin UK (Hamish Hamilton) on 8/8/2008 and by Penguin USA (Riverhead) on 22/1/2009.

BLONDE ROOTS has received some great reviews, to my great relief. If you want to access more reviews and the full reviews you can do so on my website http://www.bevaristo.net

Astonishing’ – The Times (UK)
‘Ingenious’ - The Observer
‘Brilliant’- The Telegraph
‘Audacious’ – Independent on Sunday
‘Powerful’ – Financial Times: A Book of the Year
‘Memerizing’ – The London Paper
‘Ingenious’ - Washington Post, USA
‘Astonishing, uncomfortable & beautiful’ – Publishers’ Weekly, USA
‘Totally original, witty & harrowing’ – Prospect Magazine
‘Highly recommended’ – Library Journal, USA
‘Brilliant satire’ – Scotland on Sunday
‘Riotous humour’ – The Independent
‘Hauntingly beautiful’ – Deseret News, USA
‘Delightful yet sobering’ – Book Page, USA
‘Sparkling new novel’ – St. Petersburg Times, USA
‘Amazing’ – BBC Radio 5/Simon Mayo Show/Dreda Say Mitchell

BLONDE ROOTS takes the transatlantic slave trade and turns it on its head: Africans enslave Europeans. Here’s the jacket description:

Welcome to a world turned upside down. Welcome to the world of Doris. One minute she’s this cute little girl playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the stinking hold of a slave ship sailing to the New World. When she finally arrives on a strange, tropical island, she discovers she is a pig-ugly savage with a brain the size of a pea, whose only purpose in life is to please her mistress.

Doris observes slavery from both sides. As an adult she becomes the personal assistant of her formidable master, Bwana, a.k.a. Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I. She also experiences the horrors of life in the sugarcane fields, where slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun.

Doris dreams of escape, of finding those she has loved and lost, of returning home to her motherland: England.

My other books have fused fiction with poetry:

Lara: the family is like water, Bloodaxe Poetry 2009 (New revised edition)
Soul Tourists, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin 2005
The Emperor’s Babe, Hamish Hamilton/Penguin 2001

I also co-edited the Granta/British Council anthology NW15 (New Writing 15) in 2007 with novelist Maggie Gee.

If you want to book me to do a reading, talk to a book club, or run creative writing courses or workshops, do get in touch, wherever you are in the world.

Visit my website to find out more about my books, my bio, my activities, my tours and eveything: http://www.bevaristo.net

You can also find me on Facebook!