A special issue that examines different facets of Caryl Phillips’s writing and which includes a contribution by Phillips himself entitled "A Familial Conversation". The issue considers his fiction, non-fiction, his complex identity involving African, Britain, the Caribbean and the United States and his approach to form. The critical essays engage in conversations about family, human life, diaspora, fictional form, time and space and cultural positionality.

Table of contents

EDITORIAL
Bénédicte LEDENT

INTERVIEW
Dancing in the Dark: Caryl Phillips in Conversation with John McLeod

ARTICLES
Kathie BIRAT
‘Really no more than a report on one man’s way of seeing’: Caryl Phillips’s Non-fictional Works

Stephen CLINGMAN
‘England Has Changed’: Questions of National Form in A Distant Shore

Vanessa A GARCIA
The Almost-Miseducation of Vanessa Garcia

Bénédicte LEDENT
Caryl Phillips and the Caribbean as Multicultural Paradigm

John McLEOD
‘Between two waves’: Caryl Phillips and Black Britain

Caryl PHILLIPS
A Familial Conversation

Abigail WARD
An Outstretched Hand: Connection and Affiliation in Crossing the River

Andrew WARNES
Enemies Within: Diaspora and Democracy in Crossing the River and A Distant Shore

Louise YELIN
‘Living State-side’: Caryl Phillips and the United States

REVIEWS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS