Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

“Ann Petry’s first novel, The Street, was a literary event in 1946, praised and translated around the world – the first book by a black woman to sell more than a million copies . . . Her work endures not merely because of the strength of its message but its artistry . . . Petry will always feel on time. … The music of her sentences, and their discipline; her unerring sense of psychology; the fullness with which she endows each character, which must be understood as a kind of love; the plots that commandeer whole hours and days. (I am writing this review in a swivet of shame, in fact, in the baleful eyeline of an unwalked dog, unwashed dishes, unanswered emails.) Her work endures not only because it illuminates reality, but because it harnesses the power of fiction to supplant it.”