Caryl Phillips

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.

From an acclaimed, award-winning novelist comes this brilliant hybrid of reportage, fiction, and historical fact: the stories of three black men whose tragic lives speak resoundingly to the problem of race in British society. " A] searching meditation on outsiders in England. . . . Foreigners is written, like all Phillips' books, in a style of even, sorrowful precision that enrages as it informs." --Pico Iyer, Time With his characteristic grace and forceful prose, Phillips describes the lives of three very different men: Francis Barber, "given" to the 18th-century writer Samuel Johnson, whose friendship with Johnson led to his wretched demise; Randolph Turpin, a boxing champion who ended his life in debt and decrepitude; and David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who arrived in Leeds in 1949 and whose death at the hands of police twenty years later was a wake up call for the entire nation. As Phillips weaves together these three stories, he illuminates the complexities of race relations and social constraints with devastating results.

Presents the stories of Francis Barber, 'given' to the great eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson; Randolph Turpin, Britain's first black world champion boxer; and, David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who arrived in Leeds in 1949, the events of whose life called into question the reality of English justice.

A young Jewish woman growing up in Germany in the middle of the twentieth century and an African general hired by the Doge to command his armies in sixteenth century Venice are bound by personal crisis and momentous social conflict. What emerges is Europe's age-old obsession with race, with sameness and difference, with blood.

Cambridge is a powerful and haunting novel set in that uneasy time between the abolition of the slave trade and the emancipation of the slaves.

A fictional re-creation chronicles the life and times of Bert Williams, the first black entertainer in the United States to achieve success and a man who dons blackface to become a headliner in the Ziegfeld Follies, in a historical novel about the tragedies of race and identity, the perils of self-invention, and the toll of his success on his personal life. Reprint. 10,000 first printing.

'The funniest man I ever saw, and the saddest man I ever knew.' This is how W.C. Fields described Bert Williams, the highest-paid entertainer in America in his heyday and someone who counted the King of England and Buster Keaton among his fans. Born in the Bahamas, he moved to California with his family.

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for FictionCaryl Phillipsâ?? ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora.

Moving into a new bungalow on an English village housing estate, retired teacher Dorothy meets night watchman Solomon, an illegal immigrant, in a tale that recounts their experiences as solitary outsiders in a hostile world. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.

The English village is a place where people come to lick their wounds. Dorothy has walked away from a bad 30-year marriage and is trying to rebuild a life. It's not immediately clear why her neighbour, Solomon, is living nearby, but gradually they establish a form of comfort in each other's presence that alleviates the isolation they both feel.

Caryl Phillips's first novel tells the story of Leila, a nineteen-year-old woman living on a small Caribbean island in the 1950s. Unsatisfied with life on the island, Leila decides to leave her friends and follow her mother overseas, taking her restless husband Michael and her young son with her.

The Africa of his ancestry, the Caribbean of his birth, the Britain of his upbringing, and the United States where he now lives are the focal points of award-winning writer Caryl Phillips' profound inquiry into evolving notions of home, identity, and belonging in an increasingly international society.At once deeply reflective and coolly prescient, A New World Order charts the psychological frontiers of our ever-changing world. Through personal and literary encounters, Phillips probes the meaning of cultural dislocation, measuring the distinguishing features of our identities-geographic, racial, national, religious-against the amalgamating effects of globalization. In the work of writers such as V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, and Zadie Smith, cultural figures such as Steven Spielberg, Linton Kwesi Johnson, and Marvin Gaye, and in his own experiences, Phillips detects the erosion of cultural boundaries and amasses startling and poignant insights on whether there can be an answer anymore to the question "Where are you from?" The result is an illuminating-and powerfully relevant-account of identity from an exceedingly perceptive citizen of the world.

Phillips explores three cities of slavery. Liverpool, constructed on the slave trade, now denying its past; the Ghanaian city of Elmina, site of the important slave embarkation fort in Africa; and Charleston, known as the entry point to America where one-third of black slaves were bought and sold.

In this fascinating inquiry into the African Diaspora, Caryl Phillips embarks on a soul-wrenching journey to the three major ports of the transatlantic slave trade. Juxtaposing stories of the past with his own present-day experiences, Phillips combines his remarkable skills as a travel essayist with an astute understanding of history. From an West African businessman's interactions with white Methodists in nineteenth-century Liverpool to an eighteenth-century African minister's complicity in the selling of slaves to a fearless white judge's crusade for racial justice in 1940s Charleston, South Carolina, Phillips reveals the global the impact of being uprooted from one's home through resonant, powerful narratives.

Following the success of How Poets Work comes this guide for would-be and published novelists. Ten contributors share their experiences of how to write a novel, where to begin, how to develop plot, character, structure, imagery, and - importantly - where to end. Literary novels, thrillers, cowboy stories, post-modem confections are all discussed, together with the difficulties of getting - and staying - published. The relationship between writer and publisher looms almost as large as that between writer and reader. In addition to advice and tips these often humorous essays also point to the diverse and idiosyncratic world of the novelist, who may write only in hotels, only in a particular room at home, only in longhand, only on a computer, only with a carefully devised plan, only with a character and no idea for a plot.Maura Dooley is a much admired poet and editor, who would like to write a novel. She is a freelance writer and arts administrator in London.

From stately lawns and gentlemen players to Andre Agassi and Venus Williams: 65 great writings on tennis that chronicle the transformation of the sport. Since its inception, tennis has embraced traditions more patrician than plebeian. But times--and tennis--have changed. The game once reserved for royalty has moved from estate lawns to the concrete courts of the city. Old guard amateurs have given way to prodigies plastered with corporate logos. And while barriers of gender, race, and class have been shattered, the modern plagues of self-promotion, the paparazzi, and challengers of ever-escalating talent loom large. In The Right Set, award-winning novelist and editor Caryl Phillips presents a collection of writings on the remarkable evolution of a gentleman's pastime into a sport of jet-set players of athletic and psychological genius. Here are the stories of champions, from the Renshaw twins to "ghetto Cinderella" Venus Williams. Here, too, are volleys between tradition and innovation--debates on everything from etiquette and earnings to Andr Agassi's rejection of the customary tennis whites. Insightful, informative, wonderfully entertaining, The Right Set is as colorful and surprising as the game itself. John McPhee on Ashe vs. Graebner David Higdon on Venus Williams James Thurber on Helen Wills Martina Navratilova on Bad Losers Martin Amis on Smashing the Rackets and more

Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling stranger/Of here and every where." In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes. These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years. Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eightieth century African who became a friend to Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers," such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul; foreign migr s, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai. With the eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society.

In his most ambitious novel to date, Phillips creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of historical fiction, one that illuminates the dark legacy of Europe's obsession with race and blood. At the center of The Nature of Blood is a young woman, a Nazi death camp survivor, devastated by the loss of everyone she loves. Her story is interwoven with a cast of characters from both the present and past: her uncle Stephan, Othello the Moorish general, three Jews in 15th century Venice, and an Ethiopian Jew struggling for acceptance in contemporary Israel. Tracing these characters through disparate lands and centuries, Phillips creates an unforgettable group portrait of individuals overwhelmed by the force of European tribalism. "An extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent novel, and a haunting one."--New York Times

This searing novel about slavery and its legacy brings the same stylistic virtuosity and tightly focused intelligence of Phillips's other novels. Higher Ground tells multiple stories, set generations and continents apart but unified by their ambitious exploration of themes of race, power, captivity, and abuse. In a slave garrison in Africa, a native collaborator betrays his people and humiliates himself in order to win the favor of white men. From an American prison cell in the 1960s, a black convict tries to impart his vision of race and justice to his indifferent family. And in a dreary city in postwar England, a displaced Jewish refugee watches her youth and sanity slip down the drain of history. Combined and in the skilled hands of Phillips, these narratives take on a devastating power.

From the British-West Indian novelist who is rapidly emerging as the bard of the African diaspora comes a haunting work about "the final passage"--the exodus of black West Indians from their impoverished islands to the uncertain opportunities of England. In her village of St. Patrick's, Leila Preston has no prospects, a young son, and a husband, Michael, who seems to prefer the company of his mistress. So when her ailing mother travels to England for medical care, Leila decides to follow her. As Caryl Phillips follows the Prestons' outward voyage--and their bewildered attempt to find a home in a country whose rooming houses post signs announcing "No vacancies for coloureds"--he produces a tragicomic portrait of hope and dislocation. The Final Passage is a novel rich in language, acute in its grasp of character, and unforgettable in its vision of the colonial legacy. "Like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garc a M rquez, Phillips writes of times so heady and chaotic and of characters so compelling that time moves as if guided by the moon and dreams."--Los Angeles Times Book Review