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In October 2019 the Booker Prize judges broke their own rules: told they could not split the prize, they named two winners, Margaret Atwood and Bernardine Evaristo, and Evaristo became the first Black woman to win it in fifty years. She was sixty and had been publishing books for twenty-five years: verse novels about Black Londoners in Roman Britain, a satire in which Africans enslave Europeans, a novel about a 74-year-old Antiguan man in Hackney hiding a lifelong love affair with another man. Born in 1959 in Eltham, south-east London, to a Nigerian father and an English mother, she started in theatre before she started in books. This guide covers her ten key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 10 key books · 1994–2023 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Bernardine Evaristo has published ten books, from the poems of Island of Abraham (1994) to Feminism (2023). The best known are Girl, Woman, Other (2019), joint winner of the Booker Prize, Mr Loverman (2013), The Emperor’s Babe (2001) and her memoir Manifesto (2021). Start with Girl, Woman, Other: its twelve linked lives are the clearest way into everything she had written before it.
Where to Start with Bernardine Evaristo
If you want the book that made her name
→ Girl, Woman, Other (2019) — twelve lives across a century of Black Britain.
If you want a tighter, funnier novel
→ Mr Loverman (2013) — one man, one marriage, one secret.
If you want her verse at its most playful
→ The Emperor’s Babe (2001) — Roman London told in modern slang.
If you want her own story
→ Manifesto (2021) — how she kept going for forty years.
10 Bernardine Evaristo Books, in Order
Island of Abraham
Her first book, a collection of poems drawing on her travels in Africa, including Kenya, Egypt and Madagascar, and on African history. She has since said she feels removed from these early poems and does not see them as the place to start with her work.
Lara
A semi-autobiographical verse novel about Lara, the daughter of a Nigerian father and a white English mother, growing up in south London. It reaches back about 150 years across three continents, through her ancestors in Nigeria, Brazil and England. It won an EMMA award for best novel, and an expanded edition appeared in 2009.
The Emperor’s Babe
Londinium in the third century: Zuleika, the daughter of Sudanese immigrants, is married off at eleven to a rich, much older Roman and begins an affair with the emperor Septimius Severus. It is written in verse full of deliberate anachronism, with designer togas and modern slang. The Times later named it one of the 100 best books of the decade, and BBC Radio 4 adapted it in 2013.
Soul Tourists
In 1988 Stanley, a cautious Londoner of Caribbean descent, and Jessie, a singer of Ghanaian parentage, drive across Europe towards the Middle East in an old Lada. On the way Stanley meets the ghosts of people of colour from European history, among them Hannibal, Pushkin and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The book mixes prose, verse and passages laid out like a script.
Blonde Roots
An inverted history of the slave trade, in which Africans enslave Europeans. Doris Scagglethorpe is taken from an English cabbage farm, shipped across the ocean and put to work on a sugar plantation, and plans her escape. Her first novel written entirely in prose, it was nominated for the Orange Prize and the Arthur C. Clarke Award.
Hello Mum
A short book written for the Quick Reads series for adult readers: a teenage boy is stabbed outside a chip shop on a hot summer afternoon, and the answers to how it happened lie close to home. BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation in 2012.
Mr Loverman
Barrington Walker is 74, Antiguan, a dapper Hackney grandfather with a long marriage to Carmel and a secret: his decades-long relationship with his childhood friend Morris. The novel follows his attempt to finally leave and tell the truth. It won the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize and the Ferro-Grumley Award, and became an eight-part BBC One series in 2024, starring Lennie James.
Girl, Woman, Other
Twelve characters, mostly Black British women, aged 19 to 93, from Amma, a playwright whose play is about to open at the National Theatre, to a banker, a teenage mother and a non-binary influencer. Their stories link across a century, told in what Evaristo calls “fusion fiction”, with few capital letters and almost no full stops. It shared the 2019 Booker Prize with Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments, was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, and spent 44 weeks in the UK top ten.
Manifesto
Her first non-fiction book: a working-class, mixed-race childhood in 1960s Woolwich as one of eight children, the Black women’s theatre company she co-founded in the 1980s, her relationships, her years of writing and teaching, and the Booker win. Its subject is persistence, and the habits that kept her writing.
Feminism
A short book in Tate’s “Look Again” series, written ahead of Tate Britain’s 2023 rehang. It looks at how women of colour have been shown in the gallery’s collection, and at the Black women artists of the 1980s, from the exhibitions of 1983–85 to The Thin Black Line at the ICA in 1985.
In What Order to Read Bernardine Evaristo
None of her books continue from one another, so read by interest. Publication order shows a clear line, though: verse novels first (Lara, The Emperor’s Babe), then a hybrid of verse and prose (Soul Tourists), then prose (Blonde Roots, Mr Loverman), and finally the loose, unpunctuated “fusion fiction” of Girl, Woman, Other, which brings the two together.
Most readers start with Girl, Woman, Other and go back to Mr Loverman. Read Manifesto after a novel or two, since it explains where the books came from.
A reading path
1. Girl, Woman, Other (2019)
2. Mr Loverman (2013)
3. The Emperor’s Babe (2001)
4. Blonde Roots (2008)
5. Manifesto (2021)
Everything Else Bernardine Evaristo Published
Beyond the 10 key books: 3 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
The years · 1959–2024
Quick facts about Bernardine Evaristo
- Known for
- Bernardine Evaristo is known for novels in verse and “fusion fiction” about Black British lives, and for becoming the first Black woman to win the Booker Prize, in 2019.
- 1959
- Born in Eltham, south-east London
- 1982
- Graduates from Rose Bruford College
- 2024
- Mr Loverman on BBC One
- Born
- 28 May 1959, Eltham, London; fourth of eight children, raised in Woolwich
- Parents
- A Nigerian father, a welder and Greenwich’s first Black councillor, and an English mother, a teacher
- Education
- Rose Bruford College (1982); PhD in creative writing, Goldsmiths (2013)
- Teaching
- Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London, teaching there since 2011
- Honours
- MBE (2009), OBE (2020), Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature (2004)
- Roles
- President of the Royal Society of Literature, the first Black or Asian person to hold the post
The red mark is 2019: Girl, Woman, Other, joint winner of the Booker Prize.
How Bernardine Evaristo Writes: Voices First
She trained as an actor and co-founded the Theatre of Black Women in the 1980s, and her books are built from voices rather than plots. Most are close first or third person, written for the rhythm of speech, and several began as verse: Lara and The Emperor’s Babe are novels in verse, and Soul Tourists mixes verse, prose and script.
Her recurring move is to put Black Britons where official history left them out: Roman London, the European past, a slave trade turned upside down in Blonde Roots. Anachronism and jokes do a lot of the work, from designer togas in Londinium to the comic voice of Barrington Walker in Mr Loverman.
Girl, Woman, Other pushes the form furthest: twelve linked lives, sentences that run on without full stops, lines broken like poetry. She calls it “fusion fiction”. It came twenty-five years after her first book.
Watch
Bernardine Evaristo in Conversation with Nicola Sturgeon
At the online 2020 Edinburgh International Book Festival, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon talks with Bernardine Evaristo about her Booker Prize-winning novel Girl, Woman, Other. From the official edbookfest channel.
Frequently asked questions about Bernardine Evaristo’s books
How many books has Bernardine Evaristo written?
Ten books of her own, all listed on this page: eight books of poetry and fiction, from Island of Abraham (1994) to Girl, Woman, Other (2019), and two of non-fiction, Manifesto (2021) and Feminism (2023). She has also edited anthologies.
What are Bernardine Evaristo’s books in order?
Island of Abraham (1994), Lara (1997), The Emperor’s Babe (2001), Soul Tourists (2005), Blonde Roots (2008), Hello Mum (2010), Mr Loverman (2013), Girl, Woman, Other (2019), Manifesto (2021) and Feminism (2023).
Where should I start with Bernardine Evaristo?
Girl, Woman, Other. Each of its twelve sections can be read almost as a story on its own, and it shows all of her interests at once. If you want something shorter and more tightly plotted, start with Mr Loverman.
What is Bernardine Evaristo’s most famous book?
Girl, Woman, Other (2019), joint winner of the 2019 Booker Prize. It also won Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year at the 2020 British Book Awards and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Why did the 2019 Booker Prize have two winners?
The rules had said since the last tie, in 1992, that the prize could not be divided, and the judges were told so. Their chair, Peter Florence, said it was their decision to flout the rules, and they split it between Evaristo and Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments. In December 2019 the BBC apologised after a presenter referred to her as “another author”.
Is Mr Loverman a TV series?
Yes. BBC One broadcast an eight-part adaptation from October to November 2024, with Lennie James as Barrington Walker, Ariyon Bakare as Morris and Sharon D. Clarke as Carmel. James and Bakare both won BAFTA TV awards for it in 2025.
Is Girl, Woman, Other being adapted?
Screen rights were acquired by Potboiler Television in 2020. No adaptation had been released by 2026.
Is Girl, Woman, Other written without full stops?
Almost. The sentences run on with few capital letters and very few full stops, and the lines break like free verse. Evaristo calls the form “fusion fiction”.
Is Bernardine Evaristo still alive?
Yes. She was born on 28 May 1959 in Eltham, London, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Brunel University London. In 2025 she received the Women’s Prize Outstanding Contribution Award.
Is Bernardine Evaristo’s writing autobiographical?
In part. Lara is based on her own mixed Nigerian and English family, and Manifesto is her memoir. Her other novels are invented, though several draw on the London she grew up in.
Footnotes
- Bernardine Evaristo — Wikipedia
- Girl, Woman, Other — Bernardine Evaristo’s website
- Evaristo, Bernardine 1959– — Encyclopedia.com
- Booker Prize: jury flouts directives, jointly awards Atwood, Evaristo — The Week, 2019
- Manifesto: On Never Giving Up — Wikipedia
- Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other screen rights won by Potboiler — The Bookseller
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“I am thinking about the fact that I am here and that’s an incredible thing.”
— Bernardine Evaristo, press conference after the 2019 Booker Prize
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