Editions

A Distant Shore

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099428886

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 224g

  • RRP: £9.99

A Distant Shore

The English village is a place where people come to lick their wounds. Dorothy has walked away from a bad thirty-year marriage, an affair gone sour and a dangerous obsession. Between her visits to the doctor and the music lessons she gives to bored teenagers, she is trying to rebuild a life.

It's not immediately clear why her neighbour, Solomon, is living in the village, but his African origin suggests a complex history that is at odds with his dull routine of washing the car and making short trips to the supermarket. Though all he has in common with the English is a shared language, it soon becomes clear that Solomon hopes that his new country will provide him with a safe haven. Gradually they establish a form of comfort in each other's presence that alleviates the isolation they both feel.

  • Imprint: Vintage

  • ISBN: 9780099428886

  • Length: 320  Pages

  • Dimensions: 198mm x 20mm x 129mm

  • Weight: 224g

  • RRP: £9.99

Reviews

  • A Distant Shore is a distillation of everything that makes Phillips's work so impressive: lucid, deceptively simple prose combined with huge ideas and complex emotions... One of those rare novels which successfully examines vast themes through the prism of small lives

    Time Out

  • Suspenseful, atmospheric, adventurous

    Independent

  • Phillips's clever novel about a society under increasing pressure to change won't fail to impress

    Sunday Express

  • This is literary fiction at its very best - a gripping, character-driven novel that portrays the malaise of a whole society through the stories of two individuals

    Sunday Tribune

  • One of the literary giants of our time

    New York Times

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About the Author

Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous acclaimed works of fiction and non-fiction, including the novels Crossing the River (shortlisted for the Booker Prize 1993) and A Distant Shore (winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize 2004). Phillips has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the PEN Open Book Award and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Granta Best of Young British Writers 1993. He has also written for television, radio, theatre and film.

Caryl Phillips

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