Crossing the River - Softcover

Caryl Phillips

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009949826X ISBN 13: 9780099498261

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2006

Synopsis

A voice speaking out of a distant past, describes the consequences of his desperation: his daughter and two sons are condemned to the hold of an English slave ship bound for America in 1753. Here, are the stories of these children: Nash, Martha, and Travis. Yet, as the narrative unfolds, we come to understand that although they are his children, they are also all of slavery's children. Nash, returning to Africa in the 1830's a Christian-educated adult, a missionary to the new territory of Liberia, slowly becoming a part of the world his 'masters' intended him to convert...Martha, her own daughter and husband sold away from her, settling in the American wild west of the late nineteenth century, freeing herself from slavery but never from the weight of "such misery in one life"...Travis, an American GI stationed in a small Yorkshire village during the Second World War, finding an acceptance in England that he doesn't know at home and that he may not be able to promise his half-English son...These brilliantly resonant stories - along with the slave ship captain's journal and the lamentations of the children's father - become a "many-tongued chorus of common memory", so vivid and powerful that it bridges the gaps between continents and centuries, inextricably linking the many generations of the African diaspora, one to the other.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

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.

About the Author:

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 won the James Tait Black Memorial Award. Caryl Phillips has also won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship, 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.

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 009949826X
• ISBN 13: 9780099498261
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 236