Small Island by Andrea Levy

A worthy winner of the 2004 Orange Prize for Fiction, Levy's novel is set largely in the grim greyness of post-war London. Told from the alternating points of view of her four main characters, it back-tracks to the war years, when Queenie Bligh found a kind of liberation helping those made homeless in the Blitz; to India, where her dull and pompous husband, Bernard, was stranded after the fighting was over; and to Jamaica, where Gilbert and Hortense had set their sights on a new and better life, convinced they would find it in what Caribbean islanders still thought of as the Mother Country.

Levy's depiction of racism - so open and extreme that it takes your breath away - is skilfully handled; and her evocation of dirty, shattered London, seen through the horrified eyes of newly married Hortense, and the more pragmatic ones of her husband Gilbert, is beautifully done. Yet her real achievement is to have created characters who are all capable of being mean, vindictive and insensitive as well as compassionate, gentle and funny - real human beings, in other words, who elicit both sympathy and anger, but never seem less than credible. It is a book from which we can all learn about the aftermath of colonialism, about immigration and prejudice, and perhaps about our own motives and convictions. Yet Levy does not set out to preach, and her light touch, wry humour and down-to-earth, almost gossipy tone make this novel as readable as it is challenging.