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An anthology about what it means to be British, incorporating 18th-century black writers with direct experience of the slave trade, white writers whose birth in British colonies resulted in a similar sense of ambivalence, and products of the British Empire such as V.S. Naipaul.Amazon.com Review

Inglan is a bitch
dere's no escapin' it
Inglan is a bitch
dere's no runnin' whey fram it.

Linton Kwesi Johnson's is just one of the many perspectives on Englandcollected together in Extravagant Strangers: A Literature ofBelonging. As the title implies, the contributors come from "outside"of Britain. Johnson was born in Jamaica, and there are pieces by RudyardKipling and William Makepeace Thackeray (both born in India); TrinidadianV.S. Naipaul; New Zealander Katherine Mansfield; early slave narratives byOlaudah Equiano, Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, and Ignatius Sancho. There are alsoentries from the latest crop of non-British-born writers such as SalmanRushdie, Kazuo Ishiguro, and William Boyd, to name just a few. Edited byCaryl Phillips--himself an outsider, born in the West Indies--thecollection attempts to identify just what it means to be British. As hewrites in his introduction, "For British writers not born in Britain, thequestion of 'belonging' surfaces in their work in a variety of ways....However, out of the tension between the individual and his or hersociety--in this case British--the finest writing is often produced."

Phillips points out that race, class, gender, and historical circumstancesalso affect the writer--obviously, the freed slave Ukawsaw Gronniosawcoming to England in the early 17th century would have a far differentexperience than the Anglo-Indian Kipling in the 19th century or theJapanese-born Ishiguro in the 20th. Nevertheless, there is somethinguniversal about all the experiences and observations noted here--fromThackeray's satirical exposé of British snobbery, "A Word About Dinners,"to V.S. Naipaul's account of his first visit to England during which he"lost the gift of fantasy, the dream of the future, the far-off place whereI was going." Extravagant Strangers is a fascinating exploration ofBritish culture across time, race, and gender. It's also a terrific samplerof great writing, one that shouldn't be missed. --Alix Wilber ... Read more

Product Description
In his most ambitious novel to date, Phillips creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of historical fiction, one that illuminates the dark legacy of Europe's obsession with race and blood. At the center of The Nature of Blood is a young woman, a Nazi death camp survivor, devastated by the loss of everyone she loves. Her story is interwoven with a cast of characters from both the present and past: her uncle Stephan, Othello the Moorish general, three Jews in 15th century Venice, and an Ethiopian Jew struggling for acceptance in contemporary Israel. Tracing these characters through disparate lands and centuries, Phillips creates an unforgettable group portrait of individuals overwhelmed by the force of European tribalism.

"An extraordinarily perceptive and intelligent novel, and a haunting one."--New York TimesAmazon.com Review
Like his earlier works, the novels Cambridge and Crossing the River, Caryl Phillips's The Nature of Blood is made up of several stories that take place over a large span of time. The result of this innovative technique is that themes, characters, and incidents resonate against one another, and history is seen not as a straight line but as a circle or a spiral. In one story, a Jewish man abandons his family to fight for the state of Israel. In another, the Moor Othello, another soldier who has left his family, comes to Venice. There, he visits the Jewish ghetto and finds himself astounded that "they should choose to live in this manner." Phillips's most daring feat in this provocative and thoughtful novel, however, may be to write in the first person about a Holocaust survivor just after World War II. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Thoughtful, passionate and heady
This thoughtful, passionate and heady novel threads together stories of people separated by time and space but linked together in one way or another however tenuously.
What threads the different sagas together is the theme of the loneliness of the outsider struggling to find their way in an alien society.
The novel includes storieswritten from theviewpoint of a German Jewish girl who survivesthe horrors of the Holocaust and the British internment in Cyprus, where the British interned hundreds of thousands of Jews to prevent them returning to their ancient homeland, in order to appease Arab greed. Vivid descriptions of the horrors of the Holocaust and the shattered lives of the survivors.
After all this is it too much for the world to live with a tiny homeland (smaller than Wales) for the Jewish people where they can live in safety in peace, in a region where Arabs control 22 states?

It also focuses on her uncle, who sacrifices all to go to the then 'Palestine' to rebuild the Jewish homeland, and of an Ethiopian Jewish girl's life decades later as anew refugee in Israel.
The trial of the Jews of the Venice ghetto faced with persecution and prejudice and the horrific blood libels designed to frame them for persecution (relevant at a time when modern blood libels are today are used to justify hatred of Israel and the Jewish people today in order to prepare the world for another Holocaust).
Through his observations of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, the newly arrived Black Moorish general in Venice, Othello, is introduced to the saga-serving in a society both alien and hostile, and his romance with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Venetian nobleman.

The concurrent theme is one of suffering, survival and renewal, the tragic repetitions of history, and the voices and emotions of the very real individuals caught up in the vast and cruel sweep of history.

Of Race, Cruelty, and Survival
The Nature of Blood is an extraordinary novel that embeds individual stories within the larger history of racial politics in Europe.Stephen is a doctor and a militant living in Palestine just before the creation of the state of Israel.A doctor and an indoctrinator, he visits refuge camps where Jews wait to gain entrance into Palestine. The novel then leaps back in time to another camp, though this one more horrific:the concentration camp where young Eva barely lives, physically weak and emotionally numb.Here, she meets Gerry, one of the Americans who liberate the camp, and he becomes a small, tenuous lifeline.Eva's story forms the heart of the story, as we glimpse both happier times and the depth of the psychological toll her short life has taken.The novel then tumbles even further back in time, to 15th century Venice, where Jews live in walled ghettoes and can be accused of crimes based on rumor.Here, we meet Othello, who explores Venice as a new resident, acutely aware of his outsider status in Venetian society. Phillips briefly delves into other lives:Malka, an Ethiopian Jew who has traveled to Palestine, only to find that her skin color makes her unemployable;and Servadio, a Jewish banker unjustly accused of sacrificing a Christian boy.

These disparate stories are connected through centuries of European mistrust of outsiders, a wariness that periodically gives rise to bursts of hatred and cruelty.The betrayed can become the betrayers. While history gives these stories context, the characters give them power.Eva's unreliable narration evokes the brutality of the Holocaust as powerfully as the details themselves.Stephen's decision to return to Palestine has significance and poignancy, especially because we realize what happens to those he leaves behind.The historical aspect lends a sense of predestination as well - an inescapability - because the reader knows that Othello will become irrationally jealous and will kill both Desdemona and himself, that Eva's adolescence will be cruelly interrupted by the Nazis, that Palestine will become Israel, and that racism and the fear of the other will continue indefinitely throughout the future of humanity.

The Nature of Blood is not a long novel, but its impact is huge.I highly recommend it for readers of literary fiction who are likely to find the elegant prose as engaging as the stories themselves.

Moving
I read this book for a general lit class first semester of last year and became entranced by it.This book is magnetic, it pulls you in and you are left to helplessly turn the pages while your eyes devour each carefully chosen word, which are strung together to make an unforgettable novel.I am abiochemistry major, but have a profound love of reading and writing.When I had to write a paper on this novel last year, i found the maximum of 10 pages stifling.There is just so much to this book, the literally angles and interwoven humanity through each masterfully-crafted tale contained within it, leaves one open to a vast sea of topics on which to write. I hope to one day teach a class which intertwines literature and science, this will certainly be a book on the list. Everyone should be exposed to the extreme humanity of this novel.

A true storyteller
Caryl Phillips knows how to tell a story.He's a citizen of the world and I appreciate his imagination and perspective.

Blacks and Jews : Kin through struggle
when i got this book, i didn't think i was going to be overwhelmed. sure, the premise was noble, but i expected it to be dry and preachy

boy was i wrong...

instead of telling you prejudice is wrong, caryl shows you in four plot lines, ecah worthy of their own novel. eva's story is the most compelling. we get to see the horror of the holocaust and how it shapes her life; even after eva is away from it, the nightmares continue. othello's story is interesting because we see the jews through his eyes as he tries to assmilate in venetian society, denying his identity in the process. you can also learn about the history of the jews and how they came to be a maligned people.

while none of the stories ever come together, they share a common thread : prejudice; how it affects the victims and the perpetrators. the parts of the novel which phillips graphically shows the holocaust horror took my breath away and made me angry that humans commited the crimes they did... ... Read more

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In this richly descriptive and haunting narrative, Caryl Phillips chronicles a journey through modern-day Europe, his quest guided by a moral compass rather than a map.Seeking personal definition within the parameters of growing up black in Europe, he discovers that the natural loneliness and confusion inherent in long jorneys collides with the bigotry of the "European Tribe"-a global community of whites caught up in an unyielding, Eurocentric history.

Phillips deftly illustrates the scenes and characters he encounters, from Casablanca and Costa del Sol to Venice, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Moscow.He ultimately discovers that "Europe is blinded by her past, and does not understand the high price of her churches, art galleries, and history as the prison from which Europeans speak."

In the afterword to the Vintage edition, Phillips revisits the Europe he knew as a young man and offers fresh observations. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Europe through the eyes of a Black Englishman
Phillips' travels, which occurred before the fall of Communism, cover Morocco, Gibralter, Spain, France, Italy, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany, Poland, Norway, and the Soviet Union.

Any travel narrative needs a 'hook' or a theme, and Phillips' is to seek out things that he can particularly relate to, as an Englishman of Black descent. He identifies with the plight of European Jews, and in other countries he highlights encounters with local Blacks. He seems to be straining for material at times, and oddly, rarely goes out of his way to seek out the local Black community, instead relying on happenstance. Yet, as he points out, the results of the Caribbean diaspora are everywhere: Even in northern Norway, he encounters another emigrant from the English-speaking Caribbean. Norway is also the occasion where the author loses his temper due to one-too-many racist incidents, and the target of his eruption is, of all things, a Norwegian customs officer. Phillips is paranoid about the revival of fascism in Europe, but perhaps that's understandable as he recounts racist slights and insults (some quite shocking to this white reader) that occur during his travels, as well as from his life in the US and UK.

My Island Man
I stumbled across "European Tribe" and decided to read it notonly because it was written by someone born in my island (St.Kitts &Nevis), but because it describes places that I long to visit.CarylPhillips uses a thought provoking style to tell of his travel around theworld.As I journeyed with him I enjoyed his vivid and frank language andalso his analysis of the different cultures. I also appreciate CarylPhillips' use and revelation of historical facts and theories to tell hisstory.I will recommend "European Tribe" to anyone interested ina black man's expereince with various cultures of the world.

A Thoughtful Analysis of European Culture
In his narrative, The European Tribe, Caryl Phillips writes about his experiences as a black British intellectual traveling mostly in Europe.He starts in Casablanca and works his way north visiting such places as Paris,Venice, and Amsterdam, finishing up in Russiabefore returning to England. This book was originally written in the early eighties, so Phillips isdescribing some places still behind the Iron Curtain.But this editiondoes include an afterword written in 1999. In his rational way, Phillipscomments in the afterword, "Europeans are human beings. They aresubject to the same insecurities, the same inability to forgive, the sameprejudices, the same disturbing nationalism, the same cruelties, as anyother people" (132). This is a good travelogue, but it is also anenlightening book for people whose main reading about the black experiencehas been from the viewpoint of African-Americans. ... Read more

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With an Introduction by Caryl Phillips
Commentary by H.L. Mencken, E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell, Lionel Trilling, Chiua Achebe, and Philip Gourevitch

"Heart of Darkness," which appeared at the very beginning of our century, was a Cassandra cry announcing the end of Victorian Europe, on the verge of transforming itself into the Europe of violence," wrote the critic Czeslaw Milosz.
        
Originally published in 1902, Heart of Darkness remains one of this century's most enduring--and harrowing--works of fiction. Written several years after Conrad's grueling sojourn in the Belgian Congo, the novel tells the story of Marlow, a seaman who undertakes his own journey into the African jungle to find the tormented white trader Kurtz. Rich in irony and spellbinding prose, Heart of Darkness is a complex meditation on colonialism, evil, and the thin line between civilization and barbarity. This edition contains selections from Conrad's Congo Diary of 1890--the first notes, in effect, for the novel which was composed at the end of that decade.
Virginia Woolf wrote of Conrad, "His books are full of moments of vision. They light up a whole character in a flash. . . .He could not write badly, one feels, to save his life." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

A different story, with much detail. But a classic nevertheless
This book is a classic. Do not stray from that opinion. However, it is full of much detail, at times excess description. This does lead to some difficulty in following the story line. It certainly is a unique way of telling a story, a different type of narrative. I would recomend it to someone looking for a challange, but to that High School student deciding to read this book because it is the shortest on the list, I'd think again. The details will make you spend more time re-reading and summarizing than it would to read a longer, easier read novel.

"Mistah Kurtz--he dead."An influential work on five 20th century seminal works
I read this book for a graduate Humanities course.Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, written in 1899 is a seminal work about the ills of colonialism, as well as a postmodern look at the subject of mankind.Conrad's book had a crucial influence on five important works of the twentieth century: J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces, and Francis Ford Coppolla's movie Apocalypse Now, screenplay by John Milius, was based on Conrad's book.Another interesting fact is that this work was read by Orson Welle's Mercury Theater Players on the radio and was to be his first movie.After doing some work on it he abandoned the project to do Citizen Kane!I would have loved to of seen what Welles could have done with this story.Conrad's story is so riveting in part, because he himself served as a riverboat captain.High school teachers and college professors who have discussed this book in thousands of classrooms over the years tend to do so in terms of Freud, Jung, and Nietzsche; of classical myth, Victorian innocence, and original sin; of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and poststructuralism.

Just a taste of the plot reels you in! Marlow, the narrator of Heart of Darkness and Conrad's alter ego, is hired by an ivory-trading company to sail a steamboat up an unnamed river whose shape on the map resembles "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea, its body at rest curving afar over a vast country and its tail lost in the depths of the land" (8). His destination is a post where the company's brilliant, ambitious star agent, Mr. Kurtz, is stationed. Kurtz has collected legendary quantities of ivory, but, Marlow learns along the way, is also rumored to have sunk into unspecified savagery. Marlow's steamer survives an attack by blacks and picks up a load of ivory and the ill Kurtz; Kurtz, talking of his grandiose plans, dies on board as they travel, downstream.

Sketched with only a few bold strokes, Kurtz's image has nonetheless remained in the memories of millions of readers: the lone white agent far up the great river, with his dreams of grandeur,his great store of precious ivory, and his fiefdom carved out of the African jungle.Perhaps more than anything, we remember Marlow, on the steamboat, looking through binoculars at what he thinks are ornamental knobs atop the fence posts in front of Kurtz's house and then finding that each is "black, dried, sunken, with closed eyelids-a head that seemed to sleep at the top of that pole, and with the shrunken dry lips showing a narrow white line of the teeth" (57).

I especially became interested in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness from the movie Apocalypse Now.There is a scene in the movie that shows Colonel Kurtz's nightstand in his cave.T. S. Elliott's poem the Waste Land is one of three books on the nightstand.The other two are Jessie L. Weston's book From Ritual to Romance, and J. G. Frazier's book The Golden Bough.Anyone wanting to understand the movie Apocalypse Now, especially the character of Colonel Kurtz, and what Milius and Copolla are trying to tell their audience need to read these three books as well as Conrad's Heart of Darkness!

As a graduate student reading in philosophy and history I recommend this book for anyone interested in literature, myth, history, philosophy, religion and fans of Apocalypse Now.

Excellent edition of classic novel
Published in 1899, Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS is like a fingerpost for its time, pointing the way of human preoccupations as they probed the final frontiers left in the world to discover, both geographically and intrapersonally, equipped only with a 19th century worldview.Where fear and discomfort with the unknown had once been associated with leaving land and heading into the open sea, Conrad now placed it in turning inward, turning from the sea up a river that penetrates an unknown land.

This is the story related one night to a group of London dwellers gathered on a dock boat in the safety and familiarity of the Thames.The speaker, a garrulous veteran seaman named Marlow, remembers how as a younger man he had pushed for the adventurous assignment of taking a steamboat up the Congo in search of a company's missing agent, Kurtz. His is a tale of horror, of what can happen to a person disengaged from civilization as it is known.This is an atmospheric exploration of knowledge, experience, innocence and morality. Conrad's language is complex but not opaque, has action but also a lot of description. As Virginia Woolf once said, Conrad could not write badly to save his own life.

That his vision requires rooting the horror in a hostile jungle culture and its customs can present a problem for a contemporary audience. The Modern Library has done a good job in introducingthis edition with notable criticism, positive and negative, excerpted from across the 20th century, including pieces by Mencken, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster and, more recently, Chinua Achebe.This edition also includes passages from Conrad's 1890 journal when he was traveling in the Congo.Several different publishers are publishing this novel, but this edition is the best I found.

Worth every moment
I've re-read this I know not how many times, but it truly remains one of my favorite "classics." This journey through the Congo (and, in turn, through the protagonist's mind) is not only well written, but it truly draws the reader into the delusional stages of consciousness. It is worth every moment.

Inside the heart of darkness....
Heart of Darkness is a novel focused with strong imagery and the concepts of darkness and light as "darkness" is the heart of man while the "light" can be civilization as a whole. I found this book somewhat discriminating in the beginning but as a whole it has a very clear statement. I can see how it is one of the greatest novels but to me Marlow, the main character, has no character as he becomes obsessed with Kurtz and can instantly become him but does not. After finding what he is looking for, Marlow is still filled with the darkness. Even though I thought this book was somewhat interesting, I would not recommend it because I did not agree with Marlow's or maybe even Conrad's view of the Congo jungle and life in it with the darkness. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from International Fiction Review, published by Thomson Gale on January 1, 2005. The length of the article is 859 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Caryl Phillips: A Distant Shore.(Book Review)
Author: Charles Sarvan
Publication: International Fiction Review (Magazine/Journal)
Date: January 1, 2005
Publisher: Thomson Gale
Volume: 32Issue: 1-2Page: 131(3)

Article Type: Book Review

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This digital document is an article from Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, 2nd ed., brought to you by Gale®, a part of Cengage Learning, a world leader in e-research and educational publishing for libraries, schools and businesses.The length of the article is 904 words.The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase.You can view it with any web browser.The Early Civilizations in the Americas Reference Library provides a comprehensive overview of the history of the regions of the American continents in which two of the world's first civilizations developed: Mesoamerica (the name for the lands in which ancient civilizations arose in Central America and Mexico) and the Andes Mountains region of South America (in present-day Peru and parts of Bolivia, northern Argentina, and Ecuador). In both regions, the history of civilization goes back thousands of years. ... Read more

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This digital document is an article from Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos, published by Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) on June 1, 2003. The length of the article is 6702 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Travel writing and postcoloniality: Caryl Phillips's The Atlantic Sound.
Author: Maria Lourdes Lopez Ropero
Publication: Atlantis, revista de la Asociación Espanola de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos (Refereed)
Date: June 1, 2003
Publisher: Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN)
Volume: 25Issue: 1Page: 51(12)

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This digital document is an article from Kola, published by Black Writers' Guild on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 5055 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Travel discourse in Caryl Phillips' The Final Passage and A State of Independence. (Literary Criticism).
Author: Horace I. Goddard
Publication: Kola (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Black Writers' Guild
Volume: 14Issue: 2Page: 39(13)

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Word count: 5454. ... Read more

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Unabridged - 6 compact discs - 7 hours ... Read more

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St Kitts author's second novel. ... Read more