Evaristo, Bernardine
Entry updated 20 April 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) UK academic,activist, journalist, editor, poet and author, active from around 1990; most of her work, through its technical devices and adventurous procedures, is teasingly adjacent to Fantastika without the free violations of the "real" she sometimes evokes. Soul Tourists (2005), partly told in verse, conveys its two protagonists on (as it were) a nonfantastic Fantastic Voyage through a ghost-ridden Europe, learning much on the way. Of more direct sf interest, Blonde Roots (2008), which is prose, is set in an Alternate History where the civilizations of Africa enslave the disordered peoples of Europe. The narrator, a young white woman, is forcibly transported to "Amarika" (see Slavery), where her experiences refract Satirically upon our own world. Evaristo has been widely recognized for the force of her work, both in fictional modes and as a Feminist dynamically engaged as campaigner and as a force from within various institutions and ginger groups. It may be that the driven multiplex energy of her best novels will increasingly be recognized as the central contribution to the complex drama of her wide-ranging career. [JC]
Bernardine Anne Mobolaji Evaristo
born London: 28 May 1959
works (highly selected)
- Soul Tourists (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2005) [hb/]
- Blonde Roots (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2008) [hb/]
links
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