Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips, who "pits himself against any kind of received wisdom" (London Review of Books), gives us a hypnotic, heartbreaking novel lit by the bright and changing lights of 1960s London. At the height of the Swinging Sixties, Victor Johnson, a young immigrant from the Caribbean, arrives in London with dreams of becoming a journalist in the "mother country." Instead, he finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a landlord equally kind and unscrupulous, and then falls into a relationship with Peter's lonely secretary, Ruth, herself a migrant from the north of England. Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the backdrop of a nation that is slowly, reluctantly evolving into a modern, multiracial society, the story unfolds to reveal the truth of both Peter's tragic background and Ruth's agonizing secret, and we witness Victor, out of his depth, adjusting to the painful realities of life in his new country. Both epic in its sweep and devastatingly intimate in its portrayal of damaged lives caught between two worlds, Caryl Phillips's Another Man in the Street lays bare the traumas that often overtake personal relationships in the wake of societal transformation, and the high price of attempting to reinvent oneself.

The powerful and evocative story of a young West Indian man's search for home in 1960s London - by the multi-award-winning author dubbed 'one of the literary giants of our time' (New York Times)**A Guardian book to look forward to in 2025**‘A masterful stylist writing at the top of his powers’ Anthony Joseph‘An engrossing, artfully constructed chronicle of lives tragically unfulfilled’ Mail on Sunday‘A remarkable achievement’ Washington Post‘A moving, accomplished study of the vulnerabilities carried and concealed by human beings on their journeys throughout the world’ Financial Times____________________________________________In the early Sixties, Victor ‘Lucky’ Johnson arrives in London from St Kitts, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Lucky soon finds work first at an Irish pub in Notting Hill – then as a rent collector for an unscrupulous slum landlord Peter Feldman.Shadowing Lucky from his early struggles in London to the present day, Caryl Phillips paints a striking portrait of a flawed but vividly alive man grappling with the lifelong disillusionments of exile – and the uniquely complicated identity of the Windrush generation.Another Man in the Street is an unforgettable story of loss, displacement, belonging, and the triumph of Black resilience - epic in scope and yet profoundly intimate; and a radical and timely portrait of immigrant London.___________________________________________________Praise for Caryl Phillips‘One of Britain's pre-eminent writers’ Guardian‘One of the literary giants of our time’ New York Times‘Phillips is a linguistic and cultural virtuoso’ The Times

From beloved Japanese author Shu¯saku Endo¯, a newly discovered novella and five short stories of love, grief, and maternal longing Shu¯saku Endo¯, widely considered one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, is known for his historical novels, which masterfully probe the encounters between the cultures and religions of East and West from a Japanese Catholic perspective. A salient and curious theme in his work is the unique image of a maternal God, and a concomitant sense of loss and longing for maternal love. Confronting the Shadows, the semiautobiographical novella discovered at the Endo¯ Museum in Nagasaki in 2020, is Endo¯’s most personal work and the interpretive key to his entire oeuvre. It tells the story of Suguro, an aspiring novelist who was separated from his mother after his parents’ divorce. Desperate to understand the woman his mother was, he sets out to retrace her footsteps, only to find himself face to face with his own demons. Accompanying the novella are five stories, each disclosing the intricacies of the sacred feminine and the apprehensions and joys of familial love. Endo once again beams bright light into the hidden corners of the human heart in this remarkable new collection.

The powerful and evocative story of a young West Indian man's search for home in 1960s London - by the multi-award-winning author dubbed 'one of the literary giants of our time' (New York Times)**A Guardian book to look forward to in 2025**‘A masterful stylist writing at the top of his powers’ Anthony Joseph‘An engrossing, artfully constructed chronicle of lives tragically unfulfilled’ Mail on Sunday‘A remarkable achievement’ Washington Post‘A moving, accomplished study of the vulnerabilities carried and concealed by human beings on their journeys throughout the world’ Financial Times____________________________________________In the early Sixties, Victor ‘Lucky’ Johnson arrives in London from St Kitts, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Lucky soon finds work first at an Irish pub in Notting Hill – then as a rent collector for an unscrupulous slum landlord Peter Feldman.Shadowing Lucky from his early struggles in London to the present day, Caryl Phillips paints a striking portrait of a flawed but vividly alive man grappling with the lifelong disillusionments of exile – and the uniquely complicated identity of the Windrush generation.Another Man in the Street is an unforgettable story of loss, displacement, belonging, and the triumph of Black resilience - epic in scope and yet profoundly intimate; and a radical and timely portrait of immigrant London.___________________________________________________Praise for Caryl Phillips‘One of Britain's pre-eminent writers’ Guardian‘One of the literary giants of our time’ New York Times‘Phillips is a linguistic and cultural virtuoso’ The Times

Caryl Phillips, who "pits himself against any kind of received wisdom" (London Review of Books), gives us a hypnotic, heartbreaking novel lit by the bright and changing lights of 1960s London. At the height of the Swinging Sixties, Victor Johnson, a young immigrant from the Caribbean, arrives in London with dreams of becoming a journalist in the "mother country." Instead, he finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a landlord equally kind and unscrupulous, and then falls into a relationship with Peter's lonely secretary, Ruth, herself a migrant from the north of England. Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the backdrop of a nation that is slowly, reluctantly evolving into a modern, multiracial society, the story unfolds to reveal the truth of both Peter's tragic background and Ruth's agonizing secret, and we witness Victor, out of his depth, adjusting to the painful realities of life in his new country. Both epic in its sweep and devastatingly intimate in its portrayal of damaged lives caught between two worlds, Caryl Phillips's Another Man in the Street lays bare the traumas that often overtake personal relationships in the wake of societal transformation, and the high price of attempting to reinvent oneself.

Caryl Phillips is one of the most respected writers of his generation. An award-winning author best known for his fiction, essays and stage plays, he has also written radio plays, nine of which were broadcast by the BBC between 1984 and 2016. Previously locked away in Phillips’s archives, housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, these hidden gems are now published in Caryl Phillips’s Radio Plays, the first collection of these important works of drama. Despite being previously overlooked, these radio plays are fully creative works and constitute an integral part of Caryl Phillips’s literary universe. Not only do these dramatic texts display the author’s hallmark mix of formal elegance and sharp social criticism, but they also offer compelling points of comparison with the rest of his wider writing. From the experience on an eighteenth-century slave ship and the life of a migrant family in 1980s England, to an account of James Baldwin's time in Paris and Marvin Gaye's stay in Belgium, these plays grapple with expansive themes in creative and dramatic ways. Contextualized by a scholarly introduction by Bénédicte Ledent, this volume introduces these works in the published form for the first time, allowing readers a better grasp of Phillips's narrative techniques, offering fascinating vistas into his imaginary world, which ranges from the history of the African diaspora to the predicament of displaced individuals the world over.

Caryl Phillips is one of the most respected writers of his generation. An award-winning author best known for his fiction, essays and stage plays, he is also the author of radio plays, nine of which were broadcast by the BBC between 1984 and 2016. Previously locked away in Phillips’s archives, housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale University, these hidden gems are now published in Caryl Phillips’s Radio Plays, the first collection of these important works of drama. Despite being previously overlooked, these radio plays are fully creative works and constitute an integral part of Caryl Phillips’s literary universe. Not only do these dramatic texts display the author’s hallmark mix of formal elegance and sharp social criticism, but they also offer compelling points of comparison with the rest of his wider writing. From the experience on an eighteenth-century slave ship and the life of a migrant family in 1980s England, to an account of James Baldwin's time in Paris and Marvin Gaye's stay in Belgium, these plays grapple with expansive themes in creative and dramatic ways. Contextualized by a scholarly introduction by Bénédicte Ledent, this volume introduces these works in the published form for the first time, allowing readers a better grasp of Phillips's narrative techniques, offering fascinating vistas into his imaginary world, which ranges from the history of the African diaspora to the predicament of displaced individuals the world over.

Discover this heartrending story of orphans, outcasts and the grip of the past from award-winning novelist Caryl Phillips â?? inspired by Wuthering Heights. It is the 1960s.

Three plays by playwright and novelist Caryl Phillips, written in the 1980s and collected here for the first time.Strange Fruit is a powerful study of a black family caught between two cultures; Where There is Darkness examines the plight of a West Indian man, Albert Williams, on the eve of his return to the Caribbean after an absence of twenty-five years; The Shelter alternates between the late eighteenth-century and 1950s London, exploring the relationship between a black man and a white woman.

"I go half way round the world and back thinking I’d made some sort of discovery and come back to find the same damn lies, the same white lies, the same black lies." _x000D_ Alvin and Errol can’t picture much of a future for themselves. They’re young, Black and living in England in the 1980s, with an entire country and political system set against them. Instead they focus firmly on their past – the sunny Caribbean and heroic father they left behind when their mother brought them to England twenty years ago. _x000D_ But when Alvin returns home from his grandfather’s funeral a new version of their past emerges, and the two brothers are caught in a desperate struggle to unearth the truth about their existence. _x000D_ Powerful and compelling, Strange Fruit by Caryl Phillips (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize) is the story of a family caught between two cultures, and the uncrossable no man’s land that can come between parents and their children.

Award-winning author Caryl Phillips presents a biographical novel of the life of Jean Rhys, the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, which she wrote as a prequel to Charlotte Bront 's Jane Eyre. Caryl Phillips's A View of the Empire at Sunset is the sweeping story of the life of the woman who became known to the world as Jean Rhys. Born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in Dominica at the height of the British Empire, Rhys lived in the Caribbean for only sixteen years before going to England. A View of the Empire at Sunset is a look into her tempestuous and unsatisfactory life in Edwardian England, 1920s Paris, and then again in London. Her dream had always been to one day return home to Dominica. In 1936, a forty-five-year-old Rhys was finally able to make the journey back to the Caribbean. Six weeks later, she boarded a ship for England, filled with hostility for her home, never to return. Phillips's gripping new novel is equally a story about the beginning of the end of a system that had sustained Britain for two centuries but that wreaked havoc on the lives of all who lived in the shadow of the empire: both men and women, colonizer and colonized. A true literary feat, A View of the Empire at Sunset uncovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by offering a look into the life of one of the greatest storytellers of the twentieth century and retelling a profound story that is singularly its own.

`[A] remarkable novel... The story of a troubled young woman trying to make her way in England during the early years of the twentieth century' WILLIAM BOYDA New York Times Notable Book of 2018In the heart of London's Bloomsbury, Gwendolen - not yet truly famous as the writer `Jean Rhys' - is presented with the opportunity she has been waiting for.

Award-winning author Caryl Phillips presents a biographical novel of the life of Jean Rhys, the author of Wide Sargasso Sea, which was written as a prequel to Jane Eyre.Caryl Phillips' A View of the Empire at Sunset is the sweeping story of the life of the woman who became known to the world as Jean Rhys. Born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in Dominica at the height of the British Empire, Rhys lived in the Caribbean for only sixteen years before going to England. A View of the Empire at Sunset is a look into her tempestuous and unsatisfactory life in Edwardian England, 1920s Paris, and then again in London. Her dream had always been to one day return home to Dominica. In 1936 a forty-five-year-old Rhys was finally able to make the journey back to the Caribbean. Six weeks later she boarded a ship for England, filled with hostility for her home, never to return. Phillips' gripping new novel is equally a story about the beginning of the end of a system that had sustained Britain for two centuries but that wreaked havoc on the lives of all who lived in the shadow of the empire: both men and women, colonizer and colonized.A true literary feat, A View of the Empire at Sunset uncovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by offering a look into the life of one of the greatest storytellers of the twentieth century and retelling a profound story that is singularly its own.

What do we mean by 'English'? How does that image square with reality? How does our island look from abroad, and what aspects of our experience do we share with, for example, America - a nation built by outsiders and the huddled masses?Taking as its starting point a moving recollection of growing up in Leeds during the 1970s, Colour Me English broadens into a reflective, entertaining and challenging collection of essays and other non-fiction writing which ranges from the literary to the cultural and autobiographical.Elsewhere, Caryl Phillips goes on to describe the experience of living and working in America, and travels in Sierra Leone, Ghana, Belgium and France and beyond. He considers the lives and works of many figures including Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin, Billie Holiday and Luther Vandross, and how their experiences are refracted through the prisms of writing, music and cinema.But Colour Me English always circles back to questions of identity and belonging, to the nature of tribal belonging and of its reverse, exclusion.

Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award A gripping and inventive reimagining of Wuthering Heights, by award-winning author Caryl Phillips In the tradition of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and J. M. Coetzee's Foe, Caryl Phillips revisits Emily Bront 's masterpiece Wuthering Heights as a lyrical tale of orphans and outcasts, absence and hope. A sweeping novel spanning generations, The Lost Child tells the story of young Heathcliff's life before Mr. Earnshaw brought him home to his family; the Bront sisters and their wayward brother, Branwell; Monica, whose father forces her to choose between her family and the foreigner she loves; and a boy's disappearance into the wildness of the moors and the brother he leaves behind. Phillips deftly spins these disparate lives--bound by the past and struggling to liberate themselves from it--into a stunning literary work. Phillips has been called "in a league with Toni Morrison and V. S. Naipaul" (Donna Seaman, Booklist), and his work is charged with the complexities of migration, alienation, and displacement. Haunting and heartbreaking, The Lost Child transforms a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.

Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its centre is Monica Johnson, cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Intertwined with her modern narrative is the ragged childhood of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights and one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys. Written in the tradition of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, The Lost Child is a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Bronte’s masterpiece. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Phillips recovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by transforming a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.

Caryl Phillips’s The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. At its centre is Monica Johnson, cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the north of England. Intertwined with her modern narrative is the ragged childhood of Emily Brontë’s Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights and one of literature’s most enigmatic lost boys. Written in the tradition of Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee’s Foe, The Lost Child is a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Bronte’s masterpiece. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Phillips recovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by transforming a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.

An "arresting . . . bracing and affecting volume" (Booklist) that "brims with curiosity and cosmopolitanism" (Publishers Weekly), Color Me English was hailed in the Guardian as one of the best books of 2011 by Blake Morrison. This compilation of essays from award-winning author Caryl Phillps is "a polymorphous delight that always retains at its core the notion of identity: how it is constructed, how it is thrust upon us, how we can change it" (The Independent). A bold reflection on race and culture across national boundaries, Color Me English includes touching stories from Phillips's childhood in England; his years living and teaching in the United States during the turbulent times of 9/11; and his travels across Europe and Africa, where he engages with legendary writers James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Chinua Achebe, and Ha Jin. Featured on radio programs including The Leonard Lopate Show and The Diane Rehm Show and covered in Salon, the Huffington Post, and Essence, Color Me English is a stunning collection from Phillips, who "writes wonderfully crafted, deeply meditative treatises . . . that are] always interesting and informative" (Quarterly Black Review).

From one of our most admired fiction writers: the searing story of breakdown and recovery in the life of one man and of a society moving from one idea of itself to another. Keith--born in England in the early 1960s to immigrant West Indian parents but primarily raised by his white stepmother--is a social worker heading a Race Equality unit in London whose life has come undone. He is separated from his wife of twenty years, kept at arm's length by his teenage son, estranged from his father, and accused of harassment by a coworker. And beneath it all, he has a desperate feeling that his work--even in fact his life--is no longer relevant. Deeply moving in its portrayal of the vagaries of family love and bold in its scrutiny of the personal politics of race, this is Caryl Phillips's most powerful novel yet.

Social worker Keith, separated from his wife and their teenage son, is floundering in a world of fraught sexual politics, parental responsibilities and class expectations.