Noughts & Crosses author Malorie Blackman has reflected on the novel – explaining why she sees the 2001 book as still being as pertinent “in the times we’re living in” today.
The author’s much-celebrated young adult novel imagined a Britain where Black people were the privileged “Crosses” class, while a white underclass (“Noughts”) suffered racism and prejudice. Its central characters were Sephy and Callum, two teenagers who were forced to keep their interracial romance a secret.
Blackman has now told The Times: “With Noughts & Crosses, my major point was to talk about racism and its legacy. Unfortunately, those themes are evergreen, aren’t they? Especially in the times we’re living in.”
Blackman added that when she saw “synagogues and mosques being attacked and deliberate acts of driving into people”, she thought: “Well, this is familiar.”
She continued: “The discourse seems to be if we disagree on anything then you’re my enemy forever. Finding common ground seems to be very rare. I just find that sad.”
Last October, three people were killed – including the attacker – after a man drove a car into people outside a synagogue in Manchester, before stabbing worshippers.
That same month, a mosque in East Sussex was significantly damaged, with police treating it as a suspected arson attack and hate crime.
Noughts & Crosses became the first in a best-selling, six-book series, and was first adapted for stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company, before a TV version arrived on the BBC in 2020.
Blackman – who has penned more than 70 books – was appointed Children's Laureate in 2013 and in 2020 became the first children’s author to be awarded the prestigious PEN Pinter Prize, created in memory of playwright Harold Pinter.
She was awarded an OBE for services to children’s literature in 2008.
The 64-year-old author has frequently used her platform to champion diversity in both fiction and the publishing world itself, telling The Independent in 2020: “It’s so important that all children see all children in books not only so no one grows up believing that the world of literature is not for them.
“But also, because the power of books is about being able to walk in someone else’s shoes for a while and understand their point of view.”
More recently, she has called for the national curriculum to include a more “inclusive and diverse” range of texts.
In an essay penned to back the Lit in Colour campaign – which aims to help schools make the teaching and learning of English Literature more inclusive of writers of colour – Blackman wrote in 2024: “No child should ever feel that studying English at school is irrelevant because they never see themselves and their lives reflected in the literature they are tasked to read.”
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