The Long Song

The Long Song is a historical novel by Andrea Levy published in 2010 that was the recipient of the Walter Scott Prize. It was Levy's fifth and final novel, following the 2004 publication of Small Island. In December 2018, a three-part television adaptation of the same name was broadcast on BBC One; The Long Song was aired on PBS in February 2021.

Plot summary
The Long Song is written as a memoir by an elderly Jamaican woman living in early 19th-century Jamaica during the final years of slavery and the transition to freedom that took place thereafter. It tells the tale of a young slave girl, July, who lives at Amity – a sugarcane plantation. She lived through the 1831 Baptist War, and then the beginning of freedom. Her mother, Kitty; the slaves working the plantation land; and the owner of the plantation, the white woman Caroline Mortimer, are other characters in the novel.

Themes
The themes of the book incorporate: how it feels being an immigrant Jamaican, racism, black versus white, landlord versus tenant, slavery and its abolition, slave uprisings, rape, the 1831 Baptist War in Jamaica, the clergy, and love triangles.

Reception
Kate Kellaway in The Observer, Tayari Jones in the Washington Post, Fernanda Eberstadt in The New York Times, and Amanda Craig in The Telegraph were among those who gave the novel positive reviews.

Awards
The Long Song was a finalist for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. It was the recipient of the 2011 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction,  with the judging panel saying that "Andrea Levy brings to this story such personal understanding and imaginative depth that her characters leap from the page, with all the resilience, humour and complexity of real people. There are no clichés or stereotypes here. The Long Song is quite simply a celebration of the triumphant human spirit in times of great adversity." The New York Times Book Review named it a Notable Book of the Year.

Television adaptation
A three-part television adaptation of The Long Song, starring Tamara Lawrance, Jack Lowden, Hayley Atwell, and Lenny Henry was filmed in the Dominican Republic, and aired on BBC One in December 2018. A TV tie-in edition of the novel was released by Headline Publishing in 2018.