About the Author

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including The Lost Child (FSG, 2015), Dancing in the Dark, Crossing the River, and Color Me English. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize; his other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in New York.

Reviews

"One can see instantly the liberation that Phillips achieves and the added textures he can subtly import . . . In this meshing of Phillips as writer and Rhys as subject all the great themes of Phillips's fiction cohere in the difficult, dislocated, lonely life of Gwen Williams . . . That the novel succeeds so well is a tribute to Phillip's mastery of tone . . . It is a novel of acute psychological empathy and understanding." --The New York Times Book Review "Under [Phillips'] deft hand, the prose subtly implies more than it tells . . . Phillips illuminates the irony of global race relations." --Christian Science Monitor "You can taste Rhys, but it's still Phillips' exotic stew. . . His narrative is about homeland, family, alienation, loneliness, and need. His Gwennie is a masterfully drawn character, as dissolute, yet as determined, as Rhys' tragic characters. . . His sentences are as sharp as etchings in glass." --The Memphis Flyer "Distinguished novelist and essayist Phillips explores with rigor and artistry the ever-after effects of the toxic double-helix of racism and imperialism embodied in the African diaspora in the Caribbean, England, and America . . . A daring fictionalization . . . Hypnotic . . . Phillips' bravura, empathic, and unnerving performance makes the real-world achievement of his muse all the more surprising and significant." --Booklist (starred review) "Haunting . . . Phillips is at his best in this powerful evocation of Rhys's vision, which illuminates both her time and the present." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)