Publisher's Synopsis
This text ranges widely across the Atlantic World that Caryl Phillips has charted in his novels and non-fiction books since 1980. Phillips begins by introducing the reader to books by such authors as James Baldwin, Joseph Conrad and Richard Wright. He then goes on to reflect on the work of such seminal figures as Derek Walcott, V.S. Naipaul and Nadime Gordimer. This collection of essays is not, however, limited to the literary. The author goes in search of Steven Spielberg, Linton Kwesi Johnson and Marvin Gaye. He writes about the moment when St Kitts, the small island of his birth, became independent and talks about the role and responsibility of being a writer born into a post-colonial world who lives on both sides of the Atlantic.;In the final section of the book, the author turns the spotlight on Britain and examines the country that formed and educated him, speculating about his parents migration to Britain in the late 1950s, the continued legacy of racism, his own helpless loyalty to Leeds United, and his anxieties at feeling as though he is both of, and not of, Britain.
