Girl, Woman, Other is Bernardine Evaristo's eighth novel, for which she was awarded the 2019 Booker Prize along with Margaret Atwood for The Testaments. Evaristo has also written and published poetry, essays, and literary criticism. Currently the Vice Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, based in London's historic Somerset House, Evaristo founded the Brunel University African Poetry Prize, and is a long-time advocate of women-of-color writers. Evaristo is the first black woman to receive the Booker Prize award for her novel.
The novel moves through the lives of twelve different characters: each of the first four chapters introduces one new central character as well as two others who are central to that first character's life. The people introduced in each chapter are strangers to each other, but their lives intersect by virtue of a few random common threads. Most characters are women, except for the twelfth character, a gender-queer person. The women are also predominantly black. Evaristo presents themes of child-raising, intergenerational misunderstandings, romantic relationships, race, gender, and identity.
