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".[1] 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 by the British press. [3] Natasha Walter writes for The Guardian: "This novel hums with ambition." Diana Evans, for The Independent, praises the author's exploration of: "migration, asylum, home and loneliness", whilst criticizing certain linguistic cliches, and says that the prose style "lacks edge."[4] Kirkus Reviews summarizes the novel as: "Harsh and sad, but worth the trip."[5]
References
- ^ a b "A Distant Shore" page at author's website.
- ^ Jill Morrison (2004), "A Conversation with Caryl Phillips", in Conversations with Caryl Phillips, University Press of Mississippi, 2009, p. 135.
- ^ "Books of the moment: What the papers say". The Daily Telegraph. 29 Mar 2003. p. 166. Retrieved 19 July 2024.
- ^ "A Distant Shore by Caryl Phillips". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2024-07-18. Retrieved 2025-02-04.
- ^ A DISTANT SHORE | Kirkus Reviews.
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.