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Andrea Levy's The Long Song Shortlisted for 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction

The Long Song by Andrea Levy, an astonishingly imagined story of remarkable lives, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

Praised by the Financial Times as "a marvel of luminous storytelling" The Long Song tells the story of an unforgettable heroine during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom following the Baptist War in Jamaica in 1831. Within is a glorious celebration of language, exploring what it means to experience pain and loss, and the idea and presence of freedom.

With The Long Song, Andrea Levy reinvents the historical novel. Told in the irresistibly wilful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation, July lives with her mother until Mrs Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her "Marguerite."

Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and through the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her "freedom." It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress. Prompted and provoked by her son's persistent questioning, July's heartache and resilience are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love.

Andrea Levy is a child of the Windrush. She is the daughter of one of the pioneers who sailed from Jamaica to England on the Empire Windrush ship. Her father and later her mother came to Britain in 1948 in search of a better life. For the British born Levy this meant that she grew up black in a very white England. This experience has given her an unusual perspective on the country of her birth - neither feeling totally part of the society nor a total outsider. Her novels include the semi-autobiographical Every Light in the House Burnin' (1994), Never Far From Nowhere (1996), Fruit of the Lemon (1999) and Small Island (2004). Small Island is the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Orange Prize for Fiction Best of the Best, the Whitbread Novel Award and Best Book Award, and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize. Andrea Levy lives in London.

Andrea Levy will tour to Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa in late October.

The Man Booker Prize promotes the finest in fiction by rewarding the very best book of the year. The prize is the world's most important literary award and has the power to transform the fortunes of authors and even publishers. The prize, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2008, aims to reward the best novel of the year written by a citizen of the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. The Man Booker judges are selected from the country's finest critics, writers and academics to maintain the consistent excellence of the prize. The winner will be announced on 12 October 2010.

The Long Song is published by Hamish Hamilton Canada, Penguin Canada's prestige imprint for literary fiction, launched in 2009 with the publication of Colin McAdam's Fall, and Kim Echlin's The Disappeared, both finalists for the 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Hamish Hamilton Canada publishes such luminaries as Ali Smith, Joseph Boyden, Zadie Smith, Philip Roth, Roberto Bolaño, Michael Winter and Asian Man Booker Prize winner Miguel Syjuco.