"Black history is a series of missing chapters from British history," writes the historian David Olusoga. "I'm trying to put those bits back in." This month the award-winning writer will give a talk in Manchester to celebrate Black History Month.

"Our national history cannot be history if, in the near future, one in three young adults feels their stories remain untold, if this country's long history of empire and interconnections is marginalisedTreating a person, group or idea as if they are unimportant. and the historical reality of race is rendered almost invisible." There is no doubt: learning about Black history is vital.

But it is not just about history. English literature, says the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieA Nigerian author known for her novels Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun. , makes Black readers feel "silenced and invisible". At school, she only encountered Black people in novels as racist stereotypes, never as heroes and never as authors.

In 1991, Nigerian-British writer Ben Okri became the first Black writer to win the prestigious Booker PrizeOne of the most high-profile literary prizes for novels in the English language. for fiction. Over the next 30 years, award-winning and best-selling Black authors have transformed the world of books. Here are six of the best:

1. Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. A warm, funny and tender novel about the many ways to be a Black woman in modern Britain. Follow the interconnected lives of 12 characters in a book that explores race, feminism and sexuality through the decades. "A master class in storytelling," says the American writer Roxane Gay.

2. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. We need more "black girl fantasy", says Adeyemi. She wrote her novel in response to a genreCategory of art, music or writing. dominated by white characters. Nigerian mythology and the Black Lives MatterA political movement which aims to challenge police brutality and racism towards black people all across the world, usually using protests and other means of activism. movement inspired this epic tale, often compared to The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones.

3. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi. Two sisters, two destinies. One sold into slavery, the other married to a slave trader. So begins a story that sweeps across three continents and seven generations, from an Asante village in Ghana to the bars of Harlem, New York. "History," Gyasi writes, "is Storytelling".

4. Punching the Air by Ibi Zoboi and Yusef Salaam. Salaam was wrongly convicted of attacking a White woman in 1989. He spent more than six years in prison because of racial profiling. In this brilliant book, Salaam teams up with Haitian-American poet Ibi Zoboi to explore racial injustice from school to street to prison.

5. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead. In the 1800s, approximately 100,000 people used a network of safe housesA house in a secret location, used as a place where people hide. to flee slavery in the American South.¹ The route was called the underground railroad. In this fantastical novel, Whitehead imagines real trains running from slavery to freedom. Cora, a young enslaved girl from Georgia, makes the terrifying journey north.

6. Windrush Child by Benjamin Zephaniah. Leonard is a ten-year-old boy from Jamaica. He is part of the WindrushThe ship MV Empire Windrush arrived in Britain in 1948, bringing workers from Caribbean countries to the UK to fill post-war labour shortages. generation that came from the Caribbean to the UK after World War Two.² Zephaniah follows Leonard's life story into the present, where he is denied citizenship in the country he has lived in all his life.

Yes: The African American novelist James Baldwin said history is more than just something in textbooks. It is alive in everyone and shapes our world. To understand it, you must listen to people's stories.

No: During Black History Month, we should read non-fiction. History is fact. Novels are made up. If we want to learn from the past, we must distinguish between events and the stories people tell about them.

Or... History is the study of the past through written documents. As with all other sources, we must ask the same questions of novels: who wrote them and why? Can their version of events be trusted?