Small Island won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2005 (as well as the Whitbread) and deservedly so. Set in 1948, Andrea Levy manages to fit so much into this novel, but it never feels like too much. The turmoil of London during the Second World War, the pervasive racism both during and afterwards, the ways in which the “Mother Country” both attracted and exploited those in its empire—this would make an excellent book club or buddy read selection. Told from the perspectives of four principal characters (two men, two women; two Black and Jamaican, two white and English), and each character has their own distinct voice, so I was never left wondering whose story I was reading, as so often happens with multiple narrators. So, so good.