LITERATURE + LECTURES

Blue Willow Bookshop presents  Chris Cleave.   Please join Chris Cleave, author of the #1 New York Times bestselling novel LITTLE BEE for a talk/q&a/signing.

LITTLE BEE puts a face on the worldwide refugee crisis by telling the story of a Nigerian girl and her violent and courageous journey from her war-torn country to suburban London. The book has been universally embraced by booksellers and critics across the country and was short listed for the 2008 Costa Best Book Award in the UK and in 2009 for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book and in the U.S. was named one of the Best Books of 2009 my multiple national media outlets including NPR, the Washington Post and Oprah.com.

Rights to the book have been sold in over 20 countries, and BBC Films has acquired film rights with Nicole Kidman attached as star and producer.

Little Bee, the young female refugee from the Nigerian delta, must master the Queen's English and the Queen's England if she is to escape her past and make a life in the UK after two years in a refugee detention center. The novel opens on the day Little Bee is released from the center with no identification papers and only the address of an English couple, Andrew and Sarah, whom she once met on a Nigerian beach. All three of their lives were horribly changed by that meeting on the beach. When Little Bee unexpectedly appears at Sarah's doorstep, it is the day of Andrew's funeral.

Told in turns in the first person by Little Bee and Sarah, the novel follows these two women as they struggle to save each other and themselves. Little Bee tries to make a life for herself in a totally alien land, while Sarah must come to terms with her choices in London including an extramarital affair and her seemingly frivolous career path. United by their past and by love for Sarah's young son Charlie, Little Bee and Sarah become indispensable to each other. But their bond will face the ultimate test when the system catches up with Little Bee, and each woman must make a devastating decision.

Chris Cleave, will be stateside to celebrate the paperback release of his wonderful novel.

When Chris wrote to booksellers about Little Bee, he said, "I write because there are stories I want to tell about our world. I believe that extraordinary global stories play out in the lives of ordinary people. I think my books are popular because readers agree that people are braver and funnier and more complex than TV has the time to show. I like humans, frankly, and with your help I will continue to write about them the best way I know how."

Chris Cleave is 36. He is a novelist and a columnist for The Guardian newspaper in London, where he lives with his wife and three children.

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. His second novel is titled Little Bee in the US and Canada. It is titled The Other Hand elsewhere. It was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. It is a Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller.

Chris Cleave has been a barman, a long-distance sailor and teacher of marine navigation, an internet pioneer and a journalist.

We hope to see you at this very special event!