ABOUT THE BOOK
From Ferdinand Dennis, the critically acclaimed author of the novel Duppy Conqueror, comes The Black and White Museum, a collection of both highly personal and universal short stories. These at their heart reveal the emotional drama of faded love, the loss of individual and shared memory and the wistful longing for home. His stories powerfully portray the black presence in post-Windrush London, with its hurtling gentrification and everyday racism. Ferdinand’s characters gain wisdom and maturity with age but become powerless, as they are less able to change the course of their lives. For some there is the temptation of a return “home” but home, like London, has also moved on and is not the paradise of their memories.
‘I first encountered the short story form during my West London Comprehensive schooldays in Doris Lessing’s Nine African Short Stories. Since then I have devoured short stories from de Maupassant, Joyce, Somerset Maugham, Flannery O’Connor, Marquez, John Cheever and William Trevor, as well as collections from the Caribbean, North and South America and Britain’. Ferdinand Dennis
ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
FERDINAND DENNIS is a writer, broadcaster, journalist and lecturer, who is Jamaican by birth but at the age of eight moved to England, where his parents had migrated in the late 1950s. Dr James Procter notes: “Perhaps as a result of his Caribbean background, Dennis is a writer ultimately more concerned with routes than roots.” Other books by Ferdinand Dennis: The Sleepless Summer; The Last Blues Dance and Duppy Conqueror, which also published by HopeRoad. The author lives in North London.
Read Ferdinand Dennis, interviewed in Big Issue North >
Author photo © Francis Ware
REVIEWS
'An elegant writer, both in fiction and non-fiction, who deftly weaves the tales of the diaspora into his work.' Gary Younge
'The Black and White Museum, 15 short stories written over five decades, confirms Ferdinand Dennis as a flâneur and urban philosopher exploring territory he first began to map in his now classic novels.'
Maya Jaggi, in The Guardian >
'The biting wit prevents it from becoming too heavy but it is excellent; a thought-provoking and uncomfortable read.' Karen Cole, Hair Past A Freckle
'A writer inspired by the idea and realities of Africa and the African diaspora, which he has explored in novels, short stories and travelogues, creating a unique body of work that deserves greater recognition'
Margaret Busby
'Dennis does not disappoint... Riveting sensitive snapshots of inner city London life'
Yvonne Brewster, author and founder of Talawa Theatre Company
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