These compelling voices grip the reader's heart and do not let go even after the book's hyper-tense final page. Novelist Cleave does a brilliant job of making both characters not only believable but memorable. Little Bee is the best kind of political novel: You're almost entirely unaware of its politics because the book doesn't deal in abstractions but in human beings. has carved two indelible characters whose choices in even the most straitened circumstances permit them dignity-if they are willing to sacrifice for it. Rather than focusing on postcolonial guilt or African angst, Cleave uses his emotionally charged narrative to challenge his readers' conceptions of civility, of ethical choice. While the pretext of Little Bee initially seems contrived-two strangers, a British woman and a Nigerian girl, meet on a lonely African beach and become inextricably bound through the horror imprinted on their encounter-its impact is hardly shallow. That novel is based on his grandparents' experience during the London Blitz of World War II.Ĭleave lives in London with his French wife and three mischievous Anglo-French children. Gold, his third novel, came out in 2012, and his fourth, Everyone Brave Is Forgiven, was published in 2016. It was shortlisted for the prestigious Costa Award for Best Novel. His second novel, Little Bee, was inspired by his childhood in West Africa. In 2008, the novel was adapted to film starring Ewan McGregor and Michelle Williams. It won the 2006 Somerset Maugham Award and the Prix Special du Jury at the 2007 French Prix des Lecteurs. His first novel, Incendiary, was published in 2005 and released in 20 countries.

Awards-Somerset Maughm Award Prix des LecteursĬhris Cleave is a British author of four novels and has been a journalist for London's Guardian newspaper, where from 2008 until 2010 he wrote the column 'Down With the Kids.'.Where-raised in both Buckinghamsire (UK) and Cameroon.A sense of humor and an unflinching moral compass allow each woman, and the reader, to believe that even in the face of unspeakable odds, humanity can prevail. Now together, they face a disturbing past and an uncertain future with the help of Sarah's four-year-old son, Charlie, who refuses to take off his Batman costume. They first met on a beach in Nigeria, where Sarah was vacationing with her husband, Andrew, in an effort to save their marriage after an affair, and their brief encounter has haunted each woman for two years. Sarah is a posh young mother and magazine editor with whom Little Bee shares a dark and tumultuous past. Little Bee, a young Nigerian refugee, has just been released from the British immigration detention center where she has been held under horrific conditions for the past two years, after narrowly escaping a traumatic fate in her homeland of Nigeria.Īlone in a foreign country, without a family member, friend, or pound to call her own, she seeks out the only English person she knows.

Little bee by chris cleave