Andrea Levy was an English author best known for her novels Small Island (2004) and The Long Song (2010). She was born in London to Jamaican parents. Her work explores topics related to British Jamaicans and how they negotiate racial, cultural, and national identities. Levy was one of the first black British authors to achieve both critical and commercial success. Her novel Small Island won several major literary prizes, including the Orange Prize for women's fiction, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and the Whitbread Book of the Year award.