Description
Book Synopsis''Taut, fascinating and controversial. The Atlantic Sound may prove to be as influential today as Roots was a generation ago'' Sunday Times
In The Atlantic Sound Caryl Phillips explores the complex notion of what constitutes ''home''. Seen through the historical prism of the Atlantic Slave trade, he undertakes a personal quest to come to terms with the dislocation and discontinuities that a diasporan history engenders in the soul of an individual.
Philips journeys from the Caribbean to Britain by banana boat, repeating a journey he made to England as a child in the 1950s. He then visits three pivotal cities: L
Trade Review
Like Jonathan Raban and the early V. S. Naipaul, Phillips can do truly live reportage. The honesty and detail forces you to experience what the writer is going through . . . Whether he is writing fiction or non-fiction, he seems to hone every thought and word before he allows it to leave his head. That stillness beneath his words is what makes Caryl Phillips such an exceptional writer and this book so compelling -- Yasmin Alibhai-Brown * Observer *
So compelling and so original...The result is history and sociology at its most heartfelt * Booklist *
A powerful re-examination of the salve-trade and its terrible legacy * Observer *
A glowing, indicting, dignified and dissenting work... The Atlantic Sound is crucial, unputdownable * Scotsman *
'A splendidly honest and vividly detailed venture into some of history's darkest corners-by a novelist who is also a superb reporter' * Kirkus Reviews *
