Caryl Phillips

Follows the lives of three African siblings, beginning with their imprisonment on an English slave ship in 1753 and continuing through the struggles of their descendants. Reprint.

Crossing the River

Guin Hartinger

Phillips crafts gripping and compelling images of grief, these are the best moments in his novel. However, various textual 'experiments' will only irritate readers not fervently devoted to the history and subject matter of Crossing the River.

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. Crossing the River won the James Tait Black Memorial Award in 1994, and was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.

Crossing the River

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