"Lara" is a powerful semi-autobiographical novel-in-verse based on
Booker winner Bernardine Evaristo's own childhood and family history.
The eponymous Lara is a mixed-race girl raised in Woolwich, a white
suburb of London, during the 60s and 70s. Her father, Taiwo, is
Nigerian, and her mother, Ellen, is white British. They marry in the
1950s, in spite of fierce opposition from Ellen's family, and quickly
produce eight children in ten years. Lara is their fourth child and we
follow her journey from restricted childhood to conflicted early
adulthood, and then from London to Nigeria to Brazil as she seeks to
understand herself and her ancestry. The novel travels back over 150
years, seven generations and three continents of Lara's ancestry. It is
the story of Irish Catholics leaving generations of rural hardship
behind and ascending to a rigid middle class in England; of German
immigrants escaping poverty and seeking to build a new life in 19th
century London; and of proud Yorubas enslaved in Brazil, free in
colonial Nigeria and hopeful in post-war London. "Lara" explores the
lives of those who leave one country in search of a better life
elsewhere, but who end up struggling to be accepted even as they lay the
foundations for their children and future generations. This is a new
edition of Bernardine Evaristo's first novel "Lara", rewritten and
expanded by a third since its first publication in 1997.
