Book description
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. He takes refuge from his
domestic problems in a long-cherished writing project and a renewed
relationship with his aging father, who came to Britain as part of the
windrush generation, but for the first time in his life he begins to
feel extremely vulnerable as a black man in English society.
Meanwhile Annabelle watches the man she married against the wishes
of her parents struggle with his grip on reality. Despite their three
year estrangement, she realises that they have no choice but to close
ranks if they are to protect their son from a world of street gangs
and violence.
Caryl Phillips was born in St Kitts and now lives in London and New
York. He has written for television, radio, theatre and cinema and is
the author of twelve works of fiction and non-fiction.
Crossing the River
was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and Caryl Phillips has won
the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times
Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Best of Young British
Writers 1993.
A Distant Shore
won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2004 and
Dancing in the Dark
was shortlisted in 2006.
