I'm currently devouring the third installment of this thrilling, touching, sensational, heart-wrenching trilogy and I cannot recommend it highly enough. Has anybody else read it?
The author is an award winning black woman and she was recently featured on Woman's Hour on Radio 4. It is aimed primarily at teenagers but adults love the books too. Just go to Amazon and read the reviews!!
The story is about two groups of people, The Noughts (whites) and The Crosses (blacks). Where this differs from our reality is that the ruling classes are the Crosses and the Noughts were once their slaves who are now striving to be treated as equals.
If ever there was a body of work that really challenges racism, this is it. Reading this as a black woman, I recognised all the indignities, assumptions and stereotypes inflicted on the Noughts by the Crosses and I can't help thinking that if white people read this, they will gain some insight into the reality of covert as well as overt racism that black people have to endure and why such treatment shapes how black people as well as other minorities think and respond to whites.
The author is brilliant and this story has touched me to the core. I have persuaded my white DH to read it too because one of the central characters, who appears later in the trilogy, is mixed race and faces hostility, rejection and racism from both Noughts and Crosses in society. However, acceptance also comes from those who I would have least expected it.