When Brown’s narrator is asked by her employers to speak to young students at school assemblies, she is held up as an example of diversity and achievement. The novel outlines the lengths one Black British woman will go to challenge these constraints and reject what is expected from her, even after she has achieved what looks to be enviable status in the world of finance. Within these tight constraints she finds room to examine the lingering colonial structures that prop up British society, as well as the legacy of slavery, and the pinpricks of everyday misogyny and microaggression. Natasha Brown's ability to slide between the tiniest, most telling detail and the edifice of history, the assemblage of so many lives in so many times and places, is as breathtakingly graceful as it is mercilessly true.Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a concise, fragmentary novel that runs to 100 pages. Dalloway meets Citizen by Claudia Rankine. Written in a distilled, minimalist prose, Assembly is illuminating on everything from micro aggressions in the workplace, to the reality of living in the "hostile environment", to the legacy of British colonialism.' - The Observer, Best Debuts of 2021 I take hope from Assembly, not just for our literature but also for our slow awakening.' - Diana Evans, author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted Ordinary People 'Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society: how it has poisoned even our language, making its necessary dismantling almost the stuff of dreams. She is a stunning new writer.' - Bernardine Evaristo, author of the Booker Prize-winning Girl, Woman, Other 'Natasha Brown's exquisite prose, daring structure and understated elegance are utterly captivating.
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd ISBN: 9780241992661 Number of pages: 112 Weight: 113 g Dimensions: 198 x 131 x 8 mm MEDIA REVIEWS And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?Īssembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career.
Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022Ĭome of age in the credit crunch. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 Granta Best of Young British Novelists 2023
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