Join us on a literary world trip!
Add this book to bookshelf
Grey
Write a new comment Default profile 50px
Grey
Subscribe to read the full book or read the first pages for free!
All characters reduced
Small Island (NHB Modern Plays) - (stage version) - cover

Small Island (NHB Modern Plays) - (stage version)

Andrea Levy

Publisher: Nick Hern Books

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

Summary

Hortense yearns for a new life away from rural Jamaica. Gilbert dreams of becoming a lawyer. Queenie longs to escape her Lincolnshire roots. Three intimately connected stories, tracing the tangled history of Jamaica and Britain.
Andrea Levy's epic novel, adapted for the stage by Helen Edmundson, journeys from Jamaica to Britain in 1948 – the year that HMT Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury.
Small Island was first performed at the National Theatre, London, in 2019, in an acclaimed production directed by Rufus Norris. This revised edition of the play was published alongside the revival of the production in 2022.
'Extraordinary. A spectacular adaptation of Andrea Levy's Windrush novel' - Observer
'Edmundson has a knack for skilfully distilling story... ferociously entertaining' - Time Out

'A landmark in the National Theatre's history: a tumultuous epic about first-generation Jamaican immigrants... skilfully adapted... one of the most important plays of the year' - Guardian
Available since: 04/14/2022.
Print length: 136 pages.

Other books that might interest you

  • Night Lunch - cover

    Night Lunch

    Mike Chaulk

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Night Lunch is a shapeshifting sonnet sequence set in the cold waters off the North Coast of Labrador. Reflecting Chaulk’s own experience, the speaker—a young deckhand on a freight and passenger ferry servicing isolated communities—endures long irregular work hours, weather, icebergs, and loneliness, all the while navigating the taut intersections of race, labour, class, and masculinity. That Chaulk has Inuit family in and from Labrador makes this debut poetic journey a cultural coming-home for the young deckhand, as chronicled in supple, powerful verse.
    Show book
  • Poetry Says It Better - Poems to Help You Wake Up - cover

    Poetry Says It Better - Poems to...

    Ellen Burstyn

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Read by Ellen Burstyn 
    The legendary Academy Award–winning actress reflects on her love affair with poetry and makes us believers. 
    In this beautiful book, Ellen Burstyn celebrates poetic magic and shares her favorite works. Now into her nineties, Ellen reveals she had an evangelical response to learning poetry even as a child and would memorize and recite the works of Edna St Millay to envelope herself in the poet’s deeper emotional landscape. As she continued her epic rise through film and theater—eventually winning an Oscar, a Tony, a BAFTA, and an Emmy—poetry gave voice to her experience as no other literary art form could. She never went anywhere without her curated “poetry pack.” No matter where she was in the world, while waiting on set, in rehearsal, on a train, or just relaxing, she found comfort in verse. 
    For nearly nine decades, poetry has led Ellen on a life of adventure, from a pilgrimage to Rumi’s birthplace to a friendship with Maya Angelou, during which the poet read her work in Ellen’s movie trailer, to selecting the poems to join her in love, in motherhood and in grief. 
    Featuring work by W.B. Yeats, Edna Vincent St. Millay, Rainer Maria Rilke, William Wordsworth, Edgar Allan Poe, William Ernest Henley, and others, Poetry Says It Better is a perfect daily companion for everyone looking to deepen and add meaning to their life experience. Throughout, Burstyn’s charming voice and luminous insights help readers meet her in this poetic celebration—soul to soul.
    Show book
  • The Prophet - Khalil Gibran's Masterpiece - cover

    The Prophet - Khalil Gibran's...

    Kahlil Gibran

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Enter a world of profound wisdom and poetic brilliance in this hauntingly beautiful narration of "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. As the sun sets over the horizon, a mysterious voice emerges from the shadows, its cadence like a mesmerizing melody, drawing you closer into the depths of its words. 
    This premium quality narration weaves a tapestry of life's deepest questions, from love and sorrow, to passion and freedom. The soothing tone of the narrator's voice carries the weight of centuries, as if echoing through time itself, and with every word, you'll feel an intimate connection to the profound thoughts that have transcended generations. Prepare for an odyssey of the soul, where the wisdom of ages past meets the pulse of the present. Whether a seeker of truth or a lover of literature, this transformative audiobook will immerse you in introspection. 
    Let the voice of the prophet guide you on a transcendent expedition through the boundless landscapes of existence. As you listen, you'll find yourself spellbound by the ethereal imagery that unfolds before your mind's eye, painting vivid portraits of love's tender embrace and the secrets of the universe. Like a whisper in the wind, "The Prophet" speaks not only to your mind, but to the very core of your being, awakening a dormant yearning for truth and understanding. 
    "The Prophet" has enjoyed immense popularity and enduring appeal over the decades since its initial publication in 1923. It remains an influential and cherished work, leaving an indelible mark on literature and enriching the lives of countless individuals across the globe. As long as there are seekers of truth and wisdom, Kahlil Gibran's "The Prophet" will continue to hold a special place in the hearts of readers for generations to come.
    Show book
  • Sensitive to Temperature - cover

    Sensitive to Temperature

    Serena Alagappan

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Sensitive to Temperature seeks out the precariousness and sensitivities of language, as well as the fragilities of the world it represents. These are eco-poems that experience time on a human and non-human scale, from the movements of rock to the sources of rivers.
    Show book
  • The Red Shoes - cover

    The Red Shoes

    Nancy Harris

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    'What's wrong with wanting to dance?'
    When an orphaned young woman is taken in by some local do-gooders, she is expected to be seen and not heard.
    Dazzled by a pair of beautiful shoes, she sees in them an opportunity to shine – but soon her feet betray her, taking her to places she does not wish to go.
    Nancy Harris's version of The Red Shoes is a contemporary retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's extraordinary fairytale of dance, desire and destruction. It was first performed at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2017 and revived in the version published here in 2024 at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, by the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by Kimberley Rampersad.
    Show book
  • A Rare Recording of Allen Ginsberg Reading His Poem "America" - cover

    A Rare Recording of Allen...

    Allen Ginsberg

    • 0
    • 0
    • 0
    Irwin Allen Ginsberg (June 3, 1926 - April 5, 1997), born in Newark NJ, was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, and hostility to bureaucracy. "America" is a poem by Ginsberg written in 1956. 
    Show book