Crossing the River

By: Caryl Phillips

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Paperback | 15 January 1995

At a Glance

Paperback
256 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
20.32 x 13.34 x 1.91

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From the acclaimed author of Cambridge comes an ambitious, formally inventive, and intensely moving evocation of the scattered offspring of Africa. It begins in a year of failing crops and desperate foolishness, which forces a father to sell his three children into slavery. Employing a brilliant range of voices and narrative techniques, Caryl Phillips folows these exiles across the river that separates continents and centuries.

Phillips's characters include a freed slave who journeys to Liberia as a missionary in the 1830s; a pioneer woman seeking refuge from the white man's justice on the Colorado frontier; and an African-American G.I. who falls in love with a white Englishwoman during World War II. Together these voices make up a "many-tongued chorus" of common memory-and one of the most stunning works of fiction ever to address the lives of black people severed from their homeland.

Industry Reviews

"A brilliantly coherent version of two and a half centuries of the African diaspora. . . . Richly counterpointed. . . . Its resonance continues to deepen." --The New York Times Book Review "[Phillips] is a master ventriloquist, giving immediacy and voice to an impressive range of vivid characters about whom the reader cares deeply. . . . Wonderfully individual." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcï¿½a Mï¿½rquez, [Phillips] writes of times so heady and chaotic and of characters so compelling that time moves as if guided by the moon and dreams." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Uncommonly resourceful . . . an admirably complex and artfully wrought effort to renegotiate the staggering dimensions of the African diaspora. . . . A highly particularized web of damning circumstances, each crafted in its own distinctly styled prose . . . Crossing the River bears eloquently chastened testimony to the shattering of black lives." --Boston Globe

"Beautifully measured writing that powerfully evokes the far-reaching realities of the African diaspora. A masterwork." --Kirkus Reviews

"This ambitious novel amounts to a chorale. . . . Phillips's gifts are manifest and his technical prowess enlarges with each novel. . . . An impressively controlled performance." --Chicago Tribune

"With irony, understatement, and artful compression . . . Phillips distills the African diaspora to an essence, bitter and unforgettable." --Entertainment Weekly

"Memorable, convincing characters, broad vision, and evocative narrative result in a novel both resonant and deeply moving. . . . A stirring meditation on the hardship and perseverance of people torn from home." --Publishers Weekly

"Zigzagging across continents and generations, it is a fearless reimagining of the geography and meaning of the African diaspora. . . . Phillips brings an inventiveness and exacting lucidity to bear." --Village Voice

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