Afua Hirsch is a writer and broadcaster. She has worked as a barrister, as the West Africa correspondent for the Guardian, and as social affairs editor for Sky News. Brit(ish) is her first book and was awarded a RSL Jerwood Prize for Non-Fiction.
Brit(ish) is a wonderful, important, courageous book, and it could not be more timely: a vital and necessary point of reference for our troubled age in a country that seems to have lost its bearings. It’s about identity and belonging in 21st-century Britain: intimate and troubling; forensic but warm, funny and wise. -- Philippe Sands Brit(ish) brings together a thoughtful, intelligent, accessible, informative investigation on Britain as a nation not only in the midst of an identity crisis but in denial of what it has been and still is. -- Dolly Alderton Memoir, social analysis and an incisively argued challenge to unconscious biases: this is a truly stunning book on racial identity by a remarkable woman. -- Helena Kennedy [A] bracing and brilliant exploration of national identity … Through her often intensely personal investigations, she exposes the everyday racism that plagues British society, caused by our awkward, troubled relationship to our history, arguing that liberal attempts to be colour-blind have caused more problems than they have solved. A book everyone should read: especially comfy, white, middle-class liberals. -- Caroline Sanderson * The Bookseller, Editor's Choice * This is less a polemic about the past than an attempt to illuminate the problems of the present. Hirsch is exacting in her observations of how this history manifests itself today... This is a fierce, thought-provoking and fervent take on the most urgent questions facing us today. -- Diana Evans * Financial Times *