Black Orchids
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When the genteely impoverished and rebellious Evelyn marries the charming Emil, scion of a privileged Sinhalese family, she thinks that her dream of a life in England can now at last come true. So the family travel, with their young son Milton, from Ceylon to Tilbury Docks. But this is England in the 1950s and, no matter how hard Evelyn wishes that it would, England does not take kindly to strangers, especially families who are half black and half white.
A profound and moving novel, this is the story about the search to feel at home in your own skin.
Gillian Slovo
Gillian Slovo is an author, journalist, playwright and the President of English Pen. Gillian has written 12 novels including Black Orchids and Red Dust, which won the RFI Temoin du Monde prize in France and was made into a film starring Hilary Swank and Chiwetel Ejiofor. Her novel Ice Road was shortlisted for the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction and her family memoir, Every Secret Thing, was an international bestseller. Her play Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom , co-written for the Tricycle Theatre, has played in theatres around the world including New York and Washington DC. Her edited interviews with women politicians was put on as part of the Tricycle's 2010 Women Power and Politics Season. In 2009 she won an amnesty media award for her article on children in detention. She is a reviewer, opinion writer and in 2008 wrote a column for the South African newspaper, The Star.
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