Following a twenty-year sojourn to England, Bertram Francis returns to his native St. Kitts, a tiny West Indies island celebrating it liberation from British rule, and encounters resentment from his family and friends

A State of Independence

PHILLIPS, Caryl

Literature & Fiction

Collier Books

The Atlantic Sound

Business & Money

Vintage Books

'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. Too poor to attend Stanford University, he took to life on the stage with his friend George Walker. Together they played lumber camps and mining towns until they eventually made the agonising decision to 'play the coon'. Off-stage, Williams was a tall, light-skinned man with marked poise and dignity; on-stage he now became a shuffling, inept 'nigger' who wore blackface make-up. As the new century dawned they were headlining on Broadway. But the mask was beginning to overwhelm Williams and he sank into bouts of melancholia and heavy drinking, unable to escape the blackface his public demanded.

Dancing In The Dark

Contemporary

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 (whose family “let her go” when she married a black man), kept at arm’s length by his seventeen-year-old son, estranged from his father, and accused of harassment by a co-worker. And beneath it all, he has a desperate feeling that his work—even in fact his life—is no longer relevant.Moving deftly between past and present, the narrative uncovers the particulars of class, background, temperament, and desire that have brought Keith to this moment, and reveals how, often unwittingly, his wife, his son, and, ultimately, his father help him grasp the breadth of the changes that have occurred around him—and what these changes will require of him.At once intimate and expansive, deeply moving in its portrayal of the vagaries of familial love and bold in its scrutiny of the personal and societal politics of race, this is Caryl Phillips’s most powerful novel yet.

In the Falling Snow

Vintage

An attempt to explore the psyche of the black world, this novel is in three parts. The author has written many scripts, and his previous books include "The Final Passage" winner of the Malcolm X award, and "A State of Independence", which won the 1987 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize.

Higher Ground (King Penguin)

Literary

Penguin??Books

Trouble with her mother and her new husband convinces nineteen-year-old Leila to emigrate from her Caribbean island to England

Final Passage (A King Penguin)

United States

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 (whose family “let her go” when she married a black man), kept at arm’s length by his seventeen-year-old son, estranged from his father, and accused of harassment by a co-worker. And beneath it all, he has a desperate feeling that his work—even in fact his life—is no longer relevant. Moving deftly between past and present, the narrative uncovers the particulars of class, background, temperament, and desire that have brought Keith to this moment, and reveals how, often unwittingly, his wife, his son, and, ultimately, his father help him grasp the breadth of the changes that have occurred around him—and what these changes will require of him. At once intimate and expansive, deeply moving in its portrayal of the vagaries of familial love and bold in its scrutiny of the personal and societal politics of race, thisis Caryl Phillips’s most powerful novel yet.

KNOPF

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.

Cambridge

Two brothers and a sister are sold into slavery. This novel tells the story of the various stages of their diasporan lives. In different countries, continents and centuries they try to survive the lives which the accident of their birth has bestowed upon them.

Crossing The River

MacMillan General Books

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PHILLIPS, Caryl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by PHILLIPS, Caryl

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PHILLIPS, Caryl. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A State of Independence

The Atlantic Sound

Dancing In The Dark

In the Falling Snow

Higher Ground (King Penguin)

Final Passage (A King Penguin)

In the Falling Snow

In the Falling Snow

Cambridge

Crossing The River