Blonde Roots

Bernardine Evaristo

Welcome to a world turned upside down. One minute, Doris is playing hide-and-seek with her sisters in the fields behind their cottage. The next, someone puts a bag over her head and she ends up in the hold of a slave ship sailing to the New World.

When she finally arrives on a strange tropical island, Doris discovers that she is, in fact, a pig-ugly savage with a brain the size of a pea, whose only purpose in life is to please her mistress. While experiencing the hardships of life in the sugarcane fields, she dreams of escape, of finding those she has loved and lost, and of returning home to her motherland, England…

2009 Shortlist

2009 Longlist

Previous winners

The Women's Prize Podcast


Tune into host Vick Hope and a line-up of incredible guests on our weekly podcast full of unmissable book recommendations.