Simisola
The sixteenth Wexford novel published by Hutchinson in 1994
I had reached the point in the Wexfords where I thought, I can’t write any more of these unless I think there’s some way of changing them. So I thought, make them more political. So with Simisola we had racism in the countryside …
Only eighteen black people live in Kingsmarkham. One is Wexford’s new doctor, whose daughter has disappeared. Chief Inspector Wexford takes more than a mere professional interest in the case, testing not only his powers of deduction but his beliefs and prejudices about racial equality.
Notes
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Simisola was inspired by a newspaper article about modern-day slavery in the Yorkshire city of Sheffield. 1
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A former slave, Sojourner Truth, became an outspoken advocate for abolition, temperance, and civil and women’s rights in the nineteenth century.
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13-year-old Cynthia was exploited and incarcerated as a domestic slave in Essex. It was not until ten years later, in 2013, that someone in the local community helped her break free.
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Slavery Footprint: made in a free world.
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Adapted for TV by Alan Plater in 1996.
Contemporary Reads 2
- Peter Høeg - Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow
- Jonathan Coe - What a Carve Up!
- Denis Lehane - A Drink Before The War
- Andrea Camilleri - The Shape of Water
- Henning Mankell - The Man Who Smiled
- P.D. James - Original Sin