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Jubilee
- Author: Shelley Harris
- Category: Fiction Commercial Debut Literary
- Publisher: Orion (UK)
- Pub date: 29 December 2011
- Length: 336 pages
About Jubilee
an exceptional, arresting novel
- Clare Morrall
It is 1977, the Queen’s Silver Jubilee, and a photographer captures a moment forever: a street party with bunting and Union Jacks fluttering in the breeze. Right in the centre of the frame, a small Asian boy stares intently into the camera. The photograph becomes iconic, a symbol of everything that is great about Britain. But the harmonious image conceals a very different reality. Amid the party food and the platform shoes, the pop music and the punk, there are tensions in the Cherry Gardens community.
As the street party begins, those tensions threaten to erupt. Fast forward to the present and the boy, Satish, has become a successful cardiologist, saving lives, respected by those around him. But he is living with a secret. When Satish is asked to take part in a reunion of those involved in that Jubilee photograph, he must confront the truth about that day, and the events that changed the course of his life
About the Author
Shelley Harris was born in Cape Town, South Africa in 1967, to a South African mother and a British father. She left South Africa in 1973 because of her family’s opposition to Apartheid, and moved to Flackwell Heath in Buckinghamshire.
After taking a degree in English at Southampton University, followed by an MA in English and History at Reading, she worked as a local reporter on the Maidenhead Advertiser, specialising in film reviews. She lived in Paris for a year, a stone’s throw from the Musée Beaubourg, on the 6th floor of a skinny townhouse, in the smallest flat she’s ever seen, after which she spent five years teaching English and Media in secondary schools.
When she is not writing, Shelley volunteers at her local Oxfam bookshop, where she loves helping customers find just the right book. She is also shamelessly collecting material for her next novel…