Levy’s books attracted renewed attention in Britain recently as a result of a scandal involving members of the Windrush generation. Levy was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010 for “The Long Song,” her last novel. “Small Island” won the Orange Prize for fiction, now known as the Women’s Prize for Fiction, and the Whitbread Award, now known as the Costa Award, for the book of the year. “It’s easy to understand why she has become something of a celebrity in Britain.” “Levy portrayed with often heartbreaking wit the hardships faced by her parents’ generation,” the author Fernanda Eberstadt wrote in The Times. She published her first novel, “Every Light in the House Burnin’,” in 1994, but her biggest success came in 2004 with “Small Island,” the story of a Jamaican couple of the Windrush generation and the problems they experience once they move to Britain. The rejections spurred her on, she said, adding, “It’s grist to my mill.” “They were worried that I’d be read only by black people,” she said. Levy started writing in her 30s, after taking a creative-writing class, but publishers were not really sure what to do with her at first, she told The Guardian in 1999. The questions over identity “sent me to bed for a week,” she wrote. She instinctively walked toward the group of white people, only to be beckoned to the other side of the room. She recalled attending a racism-awareness course, in which participants were asked to gather by race.
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