Award-winning author Bernardine Evaristo has been hailed as one of Britain's most original writers. Her novels have been decribed as "Funky yarns so tantalising you want to devour them" (The Guardian) and "Glittering fictions whose words leap off the page in life. Brilliant!" (The Times). She has fused poetry with fiction in two novels-in-verse: Lara (1997), about her family history with roots in England, Nigeria, Ireland, Brazil and Germany; The Emperor's Babe (2001), about a black girl growing in Roman London nearly 2000 years ago; and a novel-with-verse Soul Toursists (2005) which features many prominant European figures of colour including Pushkin and Alessandro dei Medici, the first Duke of Florence. Her latest novel (without poetry) is Blonde Roots (Penguin, July 2008) which turns history on its head and is about Africans enslaving Europeans for four centuries. She is a fellow of both the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of Arts. Visit www.bevaristo.net to fill in the gaps.

Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind. One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver. She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of black European history and literature.