IT certainly looks like Andrea Levy’s breakthrough moment: Small Island, her most recent novel, has just won the Whitbread Novel Award, after taking the Orange Prize last year.

She’s no novice, however. Born in 1956 to Jamaican parents — her father arrived on the Windrush in 1948 — her first three novels, Every Light in the House Burnin’ (1994), Never Far from Nowhere (1996) and Fruit of the Lemon (1999), explored from different perspectives the problems faced by black British-born children of Jamaican emigrants. Small Island has a wider scope and is more narratively adventurous, shifting back and forth through time and space as it tells the story of two couples, one white and one black. Their lives intertwine, all of them affected by the idea and realisation of Empire and its aftermath.

It’s taken a while, but fortunately the idea of what makes an “English” writer is changing, and Levy has been one of those quietly, yet forcefully, voicing that change. The critic Bonnie Greer remarked that her writing is as English as Tony Parsons’s and Nick Hornby’s, and she’s right. Small Island does what the best novels can do — make the political personal — and accomplishes this with style, humanity, grace and a true gift for storytelling.

VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE ARTIST

YOU CAN CHOOSE the Times/South Bank Show Breakthrough Award in a unique collaboration between this newspaper and the country’s leading TV arts programme. The award will be presented on Thursday, January 27, at the Savoy hotel in London, as part of the South Bank Show’s annual distinction ceremony.

Hundreds have already voted with - so far - unexpected poll leaders, so vote today for the most exciting new face from the shortlist of nominees compiled by Times critics. Each day in T2, a critic will explain his or her choice of nominee for the award. You can register your vote now for the Breakthrough Award nominee of your choice.

Here are the nominees:

Ben Whishaw, stage actor;
James McAvoy, TV actor;
Nicola Benedetti, violinist;
Mark Stone, opera baritone;
Lauren Cuthbertson, dancer;
Razorlight, pop group;
Andrea Levy, writer;
Will Smith, comedian;
Amma Asante, film director;
Lali Chetwynd, performance artist.

www.timesonline.co.uk/breakthrough or phone: 0870 9093819 (national rates apply)