BBC adaptation of Levy novel sparks Headline editions

Headline is publishing a TV tie-in of Andrea Levy’s The Long Song, set on a sugar plantation in Jamaica in the dying days of slavery, to coincide with its adaptation for a three-part drama on BBC1. The dramatisation is expected to air at the end of the year or in early 2019. Headline will also be reissuing Levy's Small Island next month in hardback "to reflect the novel’s Jamaican heritage".

Levy said she was "particularly happy" to have her novel, The Long Song, serialised by Heyday and the BBC. "This untold story from Britain’s complex past in the Caribbean will be a period drama like no other," she said.

Tamara Lawrance is set to star as central character July, slave and maid to Caroline Mortimer, a narrow-minded plantation owner, played by Hayley Atwell. Lenny Henry will appear as Godfrey, July’s fellow slave, and Jack Lowden as Robert Goodwin, new overseer of the plantation who arrives with revolutionary ideas to transform it.

Levy’s publisher Tinder Press is scheduling a TV tie-in of The Long Song to publish as close to the transmission date as possible. It will be an £8.99 paperback.

Next week meanwhile, on 4th October, it will also publish a £14.99 hardback reissue of Small Island, with original artwork created by Headline deputy design director Yeti Lambregts; the book, 2004's Orange Prize-winner, sold over a million copies and was adapted as a TV drama starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Naomie Harris. 

Imogen Taylor, Tinder Press publishing director, said: "With the Empire Windrush so much in the headlines this year, it seemed important to celebrate Small Island, and to breathe fresh life into a novel that, as well as being a contemporary classic, remains one of the books Headline is proudest to have on its list."