Six Stories and an Essay, By Andrea Levy

Here comes a timely reminder that the immigrant experience is not new. Andrea Levy's family were from the Caribbean and were amongst the first to settle in Britain in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Not surprisingly, the change was traumatic. Levy's essay details some of her early experiences of growing up a stranger in a strange land and is all the more powerful for its stillness; it is not the stuff of Malcolm X but offers valuable witness all the same. The short stories are almost perfunctory but they too give a disconcerting glimpse into events that have the power to move. Of particular note are Loose Change and Uriah's War; the first a clever and honest look at contemporary attitudes to 'migrants' and the second recalling the forgotten story of West Indian troops during the first World War.