By telling such a story and writing this novel, Andrea Levy wanted to make her questioner feel proud of her heritage.

When a young woman asked the author how one could possibly take any pride in one's ancestry when all one's ancestors were slaves, she planted the seed that would eventually become The Long Song.

The questions and discussion topics that follow are designed to enhance your reading of Andrea Levy's The Long Song. Prompted and provoked by her son's persistent questioning, July's heartache and resilience are gradually revealed in this extraordinarily powerful story of slavery, revolution, freedom, and love.

Taught to read and write so that she can help her mistress run the business, July remains bound to the plantation despite her freedom. It is the arrival of a young English overseer, Robert Goodwin, that will dramatically change life in the great house for both July and her mistress.

Together they live through the bloody Baptist War and through the violent and chaotic end of slavery. Resourceful and mischievous, July soon becomes indispensable to her mistress. The child of a field slave on the Amity sugar plantation, July lives with her mother until Mrs Caroline Mortimer, a recently transplanted English widow, decides to move her into the great house and rename her Marguerite. Told in the irresistibly willful and intimate voice of Miss July, with some editorial assistance from her son, Thomas, The Long Song is at once defiant, funny, and shocking. With The Long Song, Levy once again reinvents the historical novel. The new novel from the Orange Prize-winning author of Small Island tells the story of an unforgettable heroine during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom following the Baptist War in Jamaica in 1831.

The long song novel