|
Showing 1 - 25 of
30 matches in All Departments
Considered an 'audacious' second novel, Giovanni's Room is set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence. This now-classic story of a fated love triangle explores, with uncompromising clarity, the conflicts between desire, conventional morality and sexual identity.
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 Benedicte 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.
**A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BIG JUBILEE READ PICK** 'A milestone in
the campaign for racial equality' Guardian In 1945, Rick
Braithwaite, a smart, highly educated ex-RAF pilot, looks for a job
in British engineering. He is deeply shocked to realise that, as a
black man from British Guiana, no one will employ him because of
the colour of his skin. In desperation he turns to teaching, taking
a job in a tough East End school, and left to govern a class of
unruly teenagers. With no experience or guidance, Braithwaite
attempts to instil discipline, confound prejudice and ultimately,
to teach. 'Moving and inspiring' New York Times WITH AN
INTRODUCTION BY CARYL PHILLIPS
Born in St. Kitts and brought up in the UK, bestselling author
Caryl Phillips has written about and explored the experience of
migration for more than thirty years through his spellbinding and
award-winning novels, plays, and essays. Now, in a magnificent and
beautifully written new book, Phillips reflects on the shifting
notions of race, culture, and belonging before and after the
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Color Me English
opens with an inspired story from his boyhood, a poignant account
of a shared sense of isolation he felt with the first Muslim boy
who joined his school. Phillips then turns to his years living and
teaching in the United States, including a moving account of the
day the twin towers fell. We follow him across Europe and through
Africa while he grapples with making sense of colonial histories
and contemporary migrations-engaging with legendary African,
African American, and international writers from James Baldwin and
Richard Wright to Chinua Achebe and Ha Jin who have aspired to see
themselves and their own societies more clearly. A truly
transnational reflection on race and culture in a post-9/11 world,
Color Me English is a stunning collection of writing that is at
once timeless and urgent.
|
The Housing Lark (Paperback)
Sam Selvon; Foreword by Caryl Phillips; Introduction by Dohra Ahmad
|
R405
R349
Discovery Miles 3 490
Save R56 (14%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
The humorous yet poignant novel of West Indian migrant life in
London that adds an iconic voice to the growing Caribbean canon A
Penguin Classic Set in London in the 1960's, when the UK encouraged
its Commonwealth citizens to emigrate as a result of the post-war
labor shortage, The Housing Lark explores the Caribbean migrant
experience in the Mother Country by following a group of friends as
they attempt to buy a home together. Despite encountering a racist
and predatory rental market, the friends scheme, often comically,
to find a literal and figurative place of their own. Will these
motley folks, male and female, Black and Indian, from Trinidad and
Jamaica, dreamers, hustlers, and artists, be able to achieve this
milestone of upward mobility? Unique and wonderful, comic and
serious, cynical and tenderhearted, The Housing Lark poses the
question of whether their lark, or quixotic idea of finding a home,
can ever become a reality. Kittitian-British novelist and
playwright Caryl Phillips contributes a foreword, while
postcolonial literature scholar Dohra Ahmad provides a contextual
introduction.
Discover this heartrending story of orphans, outcasts and the grip
of the past from award-winning novelist Caryl Phillips - inspired
by Wuthering Heights. It is the 1960s. Isolated from her parents
after falling in love with a foreigner, Monica Johnson raises her
sons in the shadow of the wild Yorkshire moors. But when her
younger son Tommy, a loner who is bullied at school, disappears,
the family bond is demolished - with devastating consequences.
Deftly intertwined with this modern narrative is the story of the
ragged childhood of Emily Bronte's Heathcliff, one of literature's
most enigmatic lost boys. Recovering the mysteries of the past to
illuminate the predicaments of the present, The Lost Child is an
exquisite novel about exile, freedom and what it is to belong.
'Heartbreaking...compelling' Independent
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 Benedicte 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.
|
Foreigners (Paperback)
Caryl Phillips
|
R588
R509
Discovery Miles 5 090
Save R79 (13%)
|
Ships in 10 - 15 working days
|
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.
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.
If you were black in America at the start of the Revolutionary War,
which side would you want to win? When the last British governor of
Virginia declared that any rebel-owned slave who escaped and served
the king would be emancipated, tens of thousands of slaves fled
from farms, plantations, and cities to try to reach the British
camp. A military strategy originally designed to break the
plantations of the American South had unleashed one of the great
exoduses in U.S. history. With powerfully vivid storytelling,
Schama details the odyssey of the escaped blacks through the fires
of war and the terror of potential recapture, shedding light on an
extraordinary, little-known chapter in the dark saga of American
slavery. Adapted for the stage by the award-winning playwright and
novelist Caryl Phillips.
In this searing novel, Caryl Phillips reimagines the life of the
first black entertainer in the U.S. to reach the highest levels of
fame and fortune.After years of struggling for success on the
stage, Bert Williams (1874--1922), the child of recent immigrants
from the Bahamas, made the radical decision to don blackface makeup
and play the "coon." Behind this mask he became a Broadway
headliner-as influential a comedian as Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy,
and W. C. Fields, who called him "the funniest man I ever saw, and
the saddest man I ever knew." It is this dichotomy at Williams'
core that Phillips explores in this richly nuanced, brilliantly
written novel, unblinking in its attention to the sinister
compromises that make up an identity.
From Caryl Phillips--acclaimed author of "The Nature of Blood and "The Atlantic Sound--a masterful new novel set in contemporary England, about an African man and an English woman whose hidden lives, and worlds, are revealed in their fragile, fateful connection. Dorothy and Solomon live in a new housing estate on the outskirts of an English village. She's recently bought her bungalow; he's recently become the night watchman. He is black, an immigrant. She is white, a recently retired music teacher. They are both solitary, reticent outsiders. When they move tenuously toward each other and their paths briefly cross, neither of them can know that it will be the last true human contact either will have. The novel unfolds into the past to show us how Solomon and Dorothy have arrived at this moment: Solomon, a former soldier, escaping the horrors of a war-ravaged African country, entering England illegally, a non-man with no resources but his own waning strength, and no comprehension of the society that both hates and harbors him; Dorothy, the product of a troubled childhood and a messy divorce, fleeing the repercussions of a desperate obsession. In scene after resonant scene, we watch as Solomon and Dorothy come to live inside themselves, closing off from a world that has changed--and changed them--beyond recognition. In their powerfully compelling stories, Caryl Phillips has created a brilliant and moving portrait of modern human displacement: from home, from heart, and from self. "From the Hardcover edition.
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.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize Winner of the James Tait Black
Memorial Prize for Fiction Caryl Phillips' ambitious and powerful
novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora. It
tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through
different epochs and continents: one as a missionary to Liberia in
the 1830s, one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American West
later that century, and one a GI posted to a Yorkshire village in
the Second World War. 'Epic and frequently astonishing' The Times
'Its resonance continues to deepen' New York Times
Extravagant Strangers is renowned author Caryl Phillips's very
personal response to the popular idea that "outsiders" in Britain
are currently reinvigorating the literary canon. Phillips shows
that in fact English literature has never been homogenous: it has
been shaped and influenced by outsiders for at least two hundred
years.
Included in Extravagant Strangers are slave writers, such as
Olaudah Equiano and Ignatius Sancho; Britons born in the colonies,
such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers", such as
C.L.R. James and V. S. Naipaul; and "postcolonial" observers of
Britain, such as Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie, Timothy Mo, and Anita
Desai. With this eloquent and often inspiring collection, Caryl
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
As nineteen-year-old Leila surveys her island home from the ship
that will carry her, her husband, and baby to England, she
contemplates the Caribbean life of the 1950s that is chaotic,
hand-to-mouth, and offers no way but out.
In a vastly ambitious and intensely moving novel, the author of Cambridge creates a many-tongued chorus of the African diaspora in the complex and riveting story of a desperate father who sells his three children into slavery.
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. Her subsequent passage
to England brings her face to face with the consequences of the
decisions she has made to determine her life on her own terms.
Award-winning writer Caryl Phillips presents a beautiful,
heart-breaking novel of the life of Jean Rhys, author of Wide
Sargasso Sea. '[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 BOYD In 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. Her husband has received an unexpected inheritance;
she can, at last, return to the island of her childhood. For
Gwendolen, Dominica is a place of freedom and beauty, far away from
the lonely nights and failed dreams of England. But this visit home
compels her to reflect on the events of her past, and on what they
may mean for her future. 'Phillips' novel of being and becoming, of
memory, and the mythology of writers and writing is a wonder. This
is a gift of a book' Niven Govinden, author of All the Days and
Nights 'This dark, glimmering beauty of a novel penetrates the
English mist, illuminates the past and present and offers us the
life of a great writer, in the heart and mind of this great writer,
Caryl Phillips' Amy Bloom, author of White Houses 'Subtle and
piercing... Phillips keeps on taking risks and telling powerful
stories' Times Literary Supplement
In this richly descriptive and haunting narrative, Caryl Phillips chronicles a journey through modern-day Europe, his quest guided by a moral compass rather than a map. Seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe, he discovers that the natural loneliness and confusion inherent in long jorneys collides with the bigotry of the "European Tribe"-a global community of whites caught up in an unyielding, Eurocentric history.
Phillips deftly illustrates the scenes and characters he encounters, from Casablanca and Costa del Sol to Venice, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Moscow. He ultimately discovers that "Europe is blinded by her past, and does not understand the high price of her churches, art galleries, and history as the prison from which Europeans speak."
In the afterword to the Vintage edition, Phillips revisits the Europe he knew as a young man and offers fresh observations.
'A brilliant hybrid of reportage, fiction, and historical fact that
tells the stories of three black men whose tragic lives speak
resoundingly to the place and role of the foreigner in English
society' Observer Francis Barber, 'given' to the great
eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson, afforded an unusual depth
of freedom, which, after Johnson's death, would help hasten his
wretched demise.... Randolph Turpin, Britain's first black world
champion boxer, who made history in 1951 by defeating Sugar Ray
Robinson, and who ended his life in debt and despair... David
Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who arrived in Leeds in 1949, the
events of whose life and death would question the reality of
English justice, and serve as a wake-up call for the entire nation.
Each of these men's stories is told in a different, perfectly
realized voice. Each illuminates the complexity and drama that lie
behind the tragedy of their lives. And each explores the themes at
the heart of Caryl Phillips' work - belonging, identity, and race.
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.
|
You may like...
Not available
|