Common Reading
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This year's Common Reading, Little Bee, by Chris Cleave, tells a story of two intertwined lives and the hidden world of refugees. Little Bee, a young Nigerian, is released from a British immigration detention center where she has been held under horrific conditions for two years. She seeks out the only English person she knows: Sarah, a posh young mother and magazine editor. Eventually, what happened on a beach in Nigeria, when the two first met, is revealed. Their brief encounter, a traumatic event, has haunted each woman ever since. Narrated alternately by Little Bee and Sarah, the novel also features Sarah's young son, Charlie, who refuses to take off his Batman costume and whose "goodies/baddies" worldview leavens an otherwise dark story. Little Bee explores identity, morality, and compassion; refugees and asylum; friendship, marriage, and parenting.
Chris Cleave's 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 Canada and the US, where it is a New York Times #1 bestseller. It is titled The Other Hand in the UK, where it is a Sunday Times bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards. Chris Cleave has been a barman, a long-distance sailor and teacher of marine navigation, an internet pioneer and a journalist. He lives in London with his wife and three children.
Relevant Themes
- Global citizenship
- Ethical responsibility to one another
- Cross cultural communication
- Sacrifice
- Human rights (and women's rights)
- Immigration/illegal immigration
- Journeys
- The meaning of home
- Colonialism and its ramifications
- Identity/self-discovery
- Human nature
- Friendship
- Overcoming adversity
- Communication
- Setting goals
- Citizens' rights
Author's Web site
