A many-voiced portrait of modern Britain, moving through the lives of twelve interconnected characters across generations, cities, families, friendships, classrooms, theatres, parties, betrayals and inheritances.

Its centre of gravity is Black British womanhood, but the novel keeps widening: into class, gender, sexuality, migration, motherhood, chosen family, resentment, ambition, political language, and on and on and on.

Somewhere between prose and verse, the work is fast, warm, sharp and elastic. It's full of people trying to make lives out of what history, family and Britain have handed them. It is polyphonic in the proper sense — not twelve characters politely waiting for their chapter, but a chorus of competing textures, idioms and self-mythologies.

Winner of the 2019 Booker Prize, this is a good fit for readers who want contemporary literary fiction with scale, movement and social intelligence, something formally playful without becoming a private little maze with no door handle.

2019 Hamish Hamilton hardback, first edition, second impression, with “002” on the copyright page. Booker Prize winner sticker to front cover. Light shelfwear to boards/jacket, including minor corner and edge wear, but overall a very good copy.