Words To Shape My Name

In 1857, Harriet Small is approached by a stranger in a London graveyard, who hands her her father's slave narrative. The story reveals a complex and co-dependent friendship between Edward FitzGerald and Tony Small, a man of color who served as Edward's manservant. The novel explores themes of liberty, equality, identity, and the sacrifices required to be free, spanning various locations and historical events.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 368 pages
\n Publication date: 29 January 2021
\n Publisher: New Island Books
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"An ambitious and vital novel with an epic sweep: a complex, timely story about liberty, equality, identity. This book is an act of salvage, performed with great skill: cleanly written, sharp-eyed, undeceived. — Hilary Mantel"
In a London graveyard in 1857, Harriet Small is approached by a stranger, an unwanted intruder who insists that she hear him out. In the will of a woman she only barely remembers, Harriet has been left an unusual collection of papers: her father's True Narrative of his life after escaping slavery and his journey into the heart of revolutionary Ireland. Nearly sixty years earlier, in the aftermath of Lord Edward FitzGerald's death and disgrace in the 1798 Rebellion, his sister, Lady Lucy, had commissioned Harriet's father, Tony Small, to write about his life as Edward's manservant in the form of a 'slave narrative.' But Lucy's real motivation was to restore Edward's reputation and her family's fortune. What emerges from 'Faithful Tony's pages – at first unsure but later confident in his words – is a complex, co-dependent, and sometimes turbulent friendship between the two men. Edward is everything Tony is not: beloved by a large family and carelessly sure of his privileged place in the world. With Edward, Tony hopes to begin a new life – to belong – only to find himself a stranger in a strange land who often comprehends better than his employer the racism, privilege, and power that drive the inequalities of their time. As historical events gallop towards their devastating conclusion, Tony learns that the sacrifices to be free are never-ending. And as difficult and heartbreaking as it is to read her father's story, Harriet comes to realize there is more than one way to be free.

\n Weight: 492g\n
Dimension: 156 x 233 x 32 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9781848407954\n \n