About this item
Highlights
- Caryl Phillips, who "pits himself against any kind of received wisdom" (London Review of Books), gives us a hypnotic, heartbreaking novel lit by the bright and changing lights of 1960s London.
- About the Author: Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including A View of the Empire at Sunset, The Lost Child, Color Me English, and Crossing the River.
- 240 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Literary
Description
Book Synopsis
Caryl Phillips, who "pits himself against any kind of received wisdom" (London Review of Books), gives us a hypnotic, heartbreaking novel lit by the bright and changing lights of 1960s London.
In London's swinging sixties, Victor Johnson, a young immigrant from the Caribbean, arrives in Britain with dreams of becoming a journalist in the "mother country." Instead, he finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a landlord equally kind and unscrupulous, and then falls into a relationship with Peter's lonely secretary Ruth, herself a migrant from the north of England. Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the backdrop of a country which is slowly, reluctantly, evolving into a modern, multiracial society, we discover the truth of both Peter's tragic background and Ruth's agonizing secret, and witness Victor, out of his depth, adjusting to the painful realities of life in his new country. Both epic in its sweep and devastatingly intimate in its portrayal of damaged lives all caught between two worlds, Another Man in the Street lays bare the traumas that often overtake personal relationships in the wake of transforming societies, and the high price of attempting to reinvent oneself.Review Quotes
"A remarkable achievement of mood and emotional insight, infused with an air of melancholy and wisdom that only a lifetime of examining a subject allows . . . startling . . . beguiling . . . haunting . . . Phillips achieves what eludes the beautiful and tragically human characters of his latest novel--the very opposite of erasure: survival, resilience, existence." --Bilal Qureshi, The Washington Post
"[E]ngaging . . . an absorbing tale . . . Phillips serves up powerful meditations on race, and brilliantly articulates his three lead characters' ambitions, fears, frustrations and thwarted dreams." --Malcolm Forbes, Minnesota Star Tribune
"[R]efreshing . . . Phillips's writing is blunt, pared-back and intentionally plain. . . . a portrait of absence that is both frustrating and tantalising . . . a fable-like, enigmatic tale." --Colin Grant, The Guardian
About the Author
Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, including A View of the Empire at Sunset, The Lost Child, Color Me English, and Crossing the River. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and Dancing in the Dark won the PEN Open Book Award. His other honors include a Lannan Literary Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in New York.