Books by Toni Morrison

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Book Synopsis'Toni Morrison was the lodestar who inspired us' Bernadine EvaristoTwyla and Roberta have known each other since they were eight years old, when they were thrown together as roommates in a girls' shelter. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then at a protest. The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every problem but, despite their conflict, the deep bond their shared experience has forged between them is undeniable. Recitatif keeps Twyla's and Roberta's races ambiguous throughout the story. We know that one is white and one is black, but which is which? And who is right about the race of the woman the girls tormented at the orphanage? This story is a masterful exploration of what keeps us together and what keeps us apart, of race and the relationships that shape our lives. Now with a new introduction by Zadie Smith, it is as radically compelling and relevant today as it was when first written nearly forty years ago.'Toni Morrison is the greatest chronicler of the American experience that we have ever known' Tayari Jones'Her work is an act of giving her community back to itself, so that people - African-Americans but the diaspora as well - can see and witness themselves' Diana EvansTrade ReviewThis smart slippery tale... [is] highly relevant to our times... [Recitatif] serves as a challenge to contemporary novels that prefer to take refuge in racial orthodoxy than unsettle it, as Morrison so brilliantly does here -- Claire Allfree * Daily Mail *A compelling exploration of race and relationships * i *So thought-provoking you'll want everyone you know to read it * Daily Mail, *Summer Reads of 2022* *Genius -- Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisAn exploration of race from one of the twentieth century’s primary chroniclers of the African American experience.Is who we are really only skin deep? In this searing, remonstrative book, Toni Morrison unravels race through the stories of those debased and dehumanised because of it. A young black girl longing for the blue eyes of white baby dolls spirals into inferiority and confusion. A friendship falls apart over a disputed memory. An ex-slave is haunted by a lonely, rebukeful ghost, bent on bringing their past home. Strange and unexpected, yet always stirring, Morrison’s writing on race sinks us deep into the heart and mind of our troubled humanity. Includes selections from the books Song of Solomon, The Bluest Eye, Beloved by Toni Morrison‘She gave me permission to be unapologetically Black. She informed me of the power that resided in me. She validated me when the world questioned my humanity’ Angie Thomas, author of The Hate U Give VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Sisters by Louisa May Alcott Love by Jeanette Winterson Babies by Anne Enright Language by Xiaolu GuoTrade ReviewToni Morrison makes me believe in God. She makes me believe in a divine being, because luck and genetics don’t seem to come close to explaining her * Guardian *Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book. * Stylist *

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Book SynopsisStunningly-designed new editions of Toni Morrison’s best-known novels, published by Vintage Classics in celebration of her life and work.WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY CANDICE CARTY-WILLIAMS, AUTHOR OF QUEENIEPecola Breedlove longs for blond hair and blue eyes, so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the marigolds in her garden will not bloom, and her wish will not come true. Pecola's life is about to change in other painful and devastating ways.A powerful interrogation of what it means to conform to an idea of beauty, The Bluest Eye asks vital questions about race, class and gender and remains one of Toni Morrison’s most unforgettable works.Trade ReviewSearing and haunting... [The Bluest Eye] is a unique piece of literature because it is both timeless and relevant -- Bernice McFadden, author of SUGAR * Guardian *

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Book SynopsisJoe Trace in his fifties, door-to-door salesman, erstwhile devoted husband shoots dead his eighteen-year-old lover.At the funeral, his determined, hard-working wife, Violet, who is given to stumbling into dark mental cracks, tries with a knife to disfigure the corpse. Passionate and profound, Jazz brings us back and forth in time, in a narrative assembled from the hopes, fears and realities of black urban life.''Jazz blazes with an intensity more usually found in tragic poetry of the past.... Morrison''s voice transcends colour and creed and she has become one of America''s outstanding post-war writers'' Guardian''She wrote about what was difficult and what was necessary and in doing so she unearthed for a generation of people a kind of redemption, a kind of relief'' Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, New York TimesBY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED**Winner of the PEN/Saul Be

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Book SynopsisFour young women are brutally attacked near an all-black town in rural Oklahoma.The inevitability of this attack, and the attempts to avert it, lie at the heart of Paradise. Spanning the birth of the Civil Rights movement, Vietnam, the counter-culture of the late 1970s, deftly manipulating past, present and future, this novel reveals the interior lives of its American citizens with astonishing clarity. It is through their eyes we see the clashes that have defined a nation.''When Morrison writes at her best, you can feel the workings of history through her prose'' Hilary Mantel, Spectator''Morrison almost single-handedly took American fiction forward in the second half of the 20th century, to a place where it could finally embrace the subtleties and contradictions of the great stain of race which has blighted the republic since its inception'' Caryl Phillips, GuardianBY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELO

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Book SynopsisInto a white millionaire''s Caribbean mansion comes Jadine. Then there's Son.Jadine is sophisticated, beautiful, a black American graduate of the Sorbonne. Son is a black fugitive from small-town Florida who embodies everything she loathes and desires. As Morrison follows their affair, she charts all the nuances of obligation and betrayal between black and white people, masters and servants, and men and women.An unforgettable and transformative novel that explores race and gender with scorching insight from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved.**Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction**''Toni Morrison was a quintessential, unabashedly American writer. Like her fellow giant, Walt Whitman, her work was, above all, audacious. She seized the landscape with a flourish and wove it, unwove it and put it back together'' Bonnie Greer, Guardian

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Book SynopsisVINTAGE CLASSICS' AMERICAN GOTHIC SERIESSpine-tingling, mind-altering and deliciously atmospheric, journey into the dark side of America with nine of its most uncanny classics.A haunting and affecting meditation on love from the Nobel-prize winning author of Beloved.May, Christine, Heed, Junior, Vida - even L - all are women obsessed with Bill Cosey. He shapes their yearnings for a father, husband, lover, guardian, and friend. This audacious vision from a master storyteller on the nature of love - its appetite, its sublime possession, and its consuming dread - is rich in characters and dramatic events, and in its profound sensitivity to just how alive the past can be. Sensual, elegiac and unforgettable, Love ultimately comes full circle to that indelible, overwhelming first love that marks us forever.Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction'Love is her best work...a slender but mesmerising tale' Evening Standard

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Book SynopsisA beautiful hardback edition of the Pulitzer-prize winning novel, from the great Toni Morrison.Sethe is now miles away from Sweet Home - the farm where she was kept as a slave for many years. Unable to forget the unspeakable horrors that took place there, Sethe is haunted by the violent spectre of her dead child, the daughter who died nameless and whose tombstone is etched with a single word, 'Beloved'.A tale of brutality, horror and, above all, love at any cost, Beloved is Toni Morrison's enduring masterpiece and best-known work.'An American masterpiece' A. S. Byatt'Toni Morrison was a giant of her times and ours... Beloved is a heartbreaking testimony to the ongoing ravages of slavery, and should be read by all' Margaret Atwood, New York Times**One of the BBC's 100 Novels That Shaped Our World**VINTAGE QUARTERBOUND CLASSICS: Bound to be beautiful

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Book SynopsisRead the searing first novel from the celebrated author of Beloved, which immerses us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio. Unloved, unseen, Pecola prays each night for blue eyes. In this way she dreams of becoming beautiful, of becoming someone like her white schoolfellows worthy of care and attention. Immersing us in the tragic, torn lives of a poor black family in post-Depression Ohio, Toni Morrison's indelible debut reveals the nightmare at the heart of Pecola's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfilment.**AS FEATURED IN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB**''She revealed the sins of her nation, while profoundly elevating its canon. She suffused the telling of blackness with beauty, whilst steering us away from the perils of the white gaze. That''s why she told her stories. And why we will never, ever stop reading them'' Afua Hirsch''Discovering a writer like Toni Morrison is rarest of plea

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Book Synopsis''Extravagantly beautiful... Enormously, achingly alive... A howl of love and rage, playful and funny as well as hard and bitter'' New York TimesAs young girls, Nel and Sula shared each other''s secrets and dreams in the poor black mid-West of their childhood. Then Sula ran away to live her dreams and Nel got married. Ten years later Sula returns and no one, least of all Nel, trusts her. Sula is a story of fear - the fear that traps us, justifying itself through perpetual myth and legend. Cast as a witch by the people who resent her strength, Sula is a woman of uncompromising power, a wayward force who challenges the smallness of a world that tries to hold her down.''What a force her thoughts have been and how grateful we must be that they were offered to us in this extremely challenging age'' Alice Walker, Guardian**AS FEATURED IN OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB**BY THE NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF BELOVED<

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Book SynopsisLured South by tales of buried treasure, Milkman embarks on an odyssey back home.As a boy, Milkman was raised beneath the shadow of a status-obsessed father. As a man, he trails in the fiery wake of a friend bent on racial revenge. Now comes Milkman's chance to uncover his own path. Along the way, he will lose more than he could have ever imagined. Yet in return, he will discover something far more valuable than gold: his past, his true self, his life-long dream of flight.A complex, wonderfully alive and imaginative story' Daily TelegraphSong of Solomonprofoundly changed my life' Marlon JamesINTRODUCED BY BOOKER PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR MARLON JAMES**Winner of the PEN/Saul Bellow award for achievement in American fiction**

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Book SynopsisThis is the story of Macon 'Milkman' Dead, heir to the richest black family in a midwestern town, as he makes a voyage of rediscovery, travelling southwards geographically and inwards spirituality. Through the enlightenment of one man the novel recapitulates the history of slavery and liberation.

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Book SynopsisIt is the mid-1800s. At Sweet Home in Kentucky, an era is ending as slavery comes under attack from the abolitionists. The worlds of Halle and Paul D. are to be destroyed in a cataclysm of torment and agony. The world of Sethe, however, is to turn from one of love to one of violence and death - the death of Sethe's baby daughter Beloved, whose name is the single word on the tombstone, who died at her mother's hands, and who will return to claim retribution.Trade ReviewShe's a masterful craftsperson, which people tend to overlook. She is as great and as innovative as Faulkner and Garcia Marquez and Woolf. * New York Times *Mercurial imagination and brilliantly elegant prose...She has the ability to shock and entrance, episode by episode, which is the hallmark of a genuine writer * The Guardian *Toni Morrison's writing is a train that knows where it's going, fierce and fast-moving in narrative, lyrically showy in description * Sunday Times *

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