Chris Cleave
publisher
Simon & Schuster
format
Hardcover
pages
288
Per Petterson
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Tracy Winn
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Elizabeth Robards
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James King
In the depths of winter, Wendy Sheanin and Alexis Welby at Simon & Schuster, sent Chris Cleaves, the author of LITTLE BEE, into the lives of THE Couples’ Book Group. The book had just been published two weeks before, but I had read a galley and had made it clear that if and when Chris ever came to the States, I wanted him to speak with a book group.
This is definitely a book to be featured because Cleave, a columnist for the Guardian, creates a story of globalization and historical interconnections shaped by exploitation, despair, and at times, moral conscience and optimism. Two strangers – a British woman and a Nigerian girl – meet on a lonely African beach and become inextricably bound through the horror imprinted on their encounter.
Rather than focusing on postcolonial guilt or African angst, Cleave uses this emotionally charged narrative to challenge our conceptions of civility and ethical choice. Everyone in this group was as captivated by Cleaves’s insights and his generosity of time and ideas as by his significant novel.
Chris Cleave is 35. He is a novelist and a columnist for The Guardian newspaper in London.
His debut novel Incendiary won a 2006 Somerset Maugham Award, was shortlisted for the 2006 Commonwealth Writers Prize, won the United States Book-of-the-Month Club’s First Fiction award 2005 and won the Prix Spécial du Jury at the French Prix des Lecteurs 2007.
Inspired by his childhood in West Africa and by an accidental visit to a British concentration camp, Chris Cleave’s second novel is entitled The Other Hand in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. It is entitled Little Bee in the US and Canada.
Chris Cleave has been a barman, a long-distance sailor, a teacher of marine navigation, an internet pioneer and a journalist. He lives in London with his French wife and three mischievous Anglo-French children.
Beyond the book
Little Bee was published as "The Other Hand" in the UK.
This is a link to Chris Cleave's site, which features his blog posts, and lots of first hand information, interview links, reviews, etc about Little Bee.
Behind the Scenes of Little Bee, Interview with Chris Cleave.