A Distant Shore (novel) explained

A Distant Shore is the seventh novel by Black British author Caryl Phillips, published in 2003 by Secker & Warburg in the UK and Knopf in the US. It was a finalist for the 2003 PEN/Faulkner Award.^[1] In the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize it won the Best Book Prize in the Europe and South Asia category and was judged that year's overall Best Book.

Set in contemporary England, A Distant Shore is the story of an African man and an English woman "whose hidden lives, and worlds, are revealed in their fragile, fateful connection". As the author has stated: "It is obviously a novel about the challenged identity of two individuals, but it's also a novel about English—or national—identity."^[2]

Reception

Upon release, A Distant Shore was generally well-received among British press. ^[3]

Further reading

• David Ellis, "'They are us': Caryl Phillips’ A Distant Shore and the British transnation", The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, September 2013, vol. 48, no. 3 411-423.

External links

• Natasha Walter, "The sadness of strangers" (review), The Guardian, 15 March 2003.
• Rand Richards Cooper, "There's No Place That's Home", The New York Times, 19 October 2003.

Notes and References

1. http://www.carylphillips.com/a-distant-shore.html "A Distant Shore" page
2. Jill Morrison (2004), "A Conversation with Caryl Phillips", in Conversations with Caryl Phillips, University Press of Mississippi, 2009, p. 135.
3. News: Books of the moment: What the papers say. 19 July 2024 . The Daily Telegraph . 29 Mar 2003. 166.