Longest Memory, Paperback/Fred D'Aguiar

This debut novel from the Guyana-born poet won both the Whitbread and David Higham First Novel Awards. Set on a Virginian plantation in the nineteenth century, it is the story of a young slave who breaks all the rules. "Gripping...Lyric optimism from rottenness and violence: a brilliant - and beautiful - achievement" Ruth Padel, >Independent on Sunday