The Atlantic Sound - Hardcover

Phillips, Caryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571196209 ISBN 13: 9780571196203

Publisher: London, United Kingdom: Faber & Faber Limited, 2000, 2000

Synopsis

Caryl Phillips explores three pivotal cities of slavery.

About this title

Review

Caryl Phillips has established himself as one of the supreme chroniclers of African dispossession and exile. In previous works such as The European Tribe and Crossing the River, he documents the ironies of post-colonial history. Phillips's latest book is perhaps best described as a "meditation," although it is also a fine and invigorating book. The subject of Phillips's broodings is that of displacement, diaspora, homelessness--all those things that ineluctably accompany any descendant of West African slaves. Phillips himself was born in St. Kitts, West Indies, in 1958, and so here he retraces the first transatlantic journey he made with his mother in the late 1950s, by banana boat from the Caribbean to the gray shores of the Mother Country. He visits three cities central to the slave trade: Liverpool, Elmina in Ghana, and Charleston. Finally in Israel, he finds a community of 2,000 African Americans who have lived in the Negev desert for 30 years. Wholly absorbing, always surprising, brilliantly observant, sensitive to human tragedy but never pessimistic, Phillips writes as beautifully as ever. "It is futile to walk into the face of history. As futile as trying to keep the dust from one's eyes in the desert." --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

From the Publisher

"Phillips's travels retrace the 'triangle' of the slave trade, and courageously -- one cannot underestimate the discomfort for anyone of African descent who engages with this material -- he takes the measure of those he encounters at each stop . . . He refuses to be deflected. Not once does he avoid the difficulties of a person or situation -- to his great credit and our considerable benefit."
-- Anthony Walton, Times Literary Supplement (London)

"Like Jonathan Raban and the early V.S. Naipaul, Phillips can do truly live reportage. The honesty and detail forces you to experience what the writer is going through . . . Whether he is writing fiction or non-fiction, he seems to hone every thought and word before he allows it to leave his head. That stillness beneath his words is what makes Caryl Phillips such an exceptional writer and this book so compelling."
-- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Observer Review

Edition details

• Publisher: London, United Kingdom: Faber & Faber Limited, 2000
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571196209
• ISBN 13: 9780571196203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352