One of Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s most highly celebrated novels, Mr. Loverman follows a man named Barrington Jedidiah Walker, who is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he has lived in Hackney, London, for years. Flamboyant and wise-cracking, with dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father, grandfather―and also secretly gay, lovers with his childhood friend, Morris.

Barry’s deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women rather than men. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barry wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? With the wit and humanity that characterized Girl, Woman, Other, Mr. Loverman explodes cultural myths and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves.

Praise for Mr. Loverman:

Winner of the Ferro Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction
Winner of the Jerwood Fiction Uncovered Prize

“[Mr. Loverman is] Brokeback Mountain with ackee and saltfish and old people.”—Dawn French

“This rip-roaring, full-bodied riff on sex, secrecy and family is Bernardine Evaristo’s seventh book. If you don’t yet know her work, you should—she says things about modern Britain that no one else does.”—The Guardian

“Heartbreaking, yet witty, this is a story that also needed to be told.”—Observer, “Book of the Year”

“A brilliant study of great characters in modern London. As such―as Mr. Barrington Walker Esq himself might have acknowledged―it is very clever indeed.”―Independent on Sunday

“Dazzling, gorgeously textured . . . Mr. Loverman is a powerful, morally rigorous and joyful novel and Bernardine Evaristo is a writer at the height of her imaginative powers.”―Huffington Post

“This novel proves to be revolutionary in its honest portrayal of gay men.”―Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In this vibrant novel, Evaristo draws wonderful character portraits of complex individuals as well as the West Indian immigrant culture in Britain.”―Booklist

“Funny, brave . . . I loved Mr. Loverman . . . Tender, even trailblazing.”―The Spectator

“Evaristo has a lot going on in this unusual urban romance, but beneath her careful study of race and sexuality is a beautiful love story. Not many writers could have two old men having sexual intercourse in a bedsit to a soundtrack of Shabba Ranks’s Mr. Loverman and save it from bad taste, much less make it sublime. But the hero of this book, and his canny creator, make everything taste just fine.”―Telegraph