Crossing the River

by Caryl Phillips

Book Overview

From the acclaimed author of Cambridge comes an ambitious, formally inventive, and intensely moving evocation of the scattered offspring of Africa. It begins in a year of failing crops and desperate... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679757945
• ISBN13: 9780679757948
• Release Date: January 1995
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Sinking hopeful roots into difficult soil

The beauty of the language and the sweep of the narrative make this novel a moving and powerful experience for the reader. Caryl Phillips explores the abandonment and misery of slavery without indicting any of the participants above the rest. In fact, the prologue begins the story with the guilty voice of the father who sells his children to a white slaver out of "a desperate foolishness" when his crops fail. The reader follows the sin and suffering of all of the participants in the slave trade, black and white, and the virtuosity of Caryl Phillips use of language makes the journey both emotional and memorable.

"First person narratives told from varied points of view"

This book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1993, Britain's equivalent to the Pulitzer. Phillips was born in the West Indies but raised in England, and the book is a series of first person narratives and stories told from a variety of points of view: an African father who sells his children into slavery, a freed slave in the South, an African-American GI in World War II. It moves from 1830s to 1960s in a sweeping look at the African Diaspora caused by slavery.

These are human stories not race stories

Eventhough the book is composed by four different unrelated stories, of a black evaegelist in Liberia, a black woman heading for a new life in California during the pilgrimage of the XIX century, the Captain of a slaves trading vessel, and a G.I in England during the II World War; for me there is a phrase that encompass most of the sadness and despair that goes with a life that other persons have damaged and limited due to the shade of your skin and not because of your actions and omissions."The young evangelist preached with all his might, but Marta could not find solace in religion, and was unable to sympathize with the sufferings of the sun of God when set against her own private misery".

Desperately heartbreaking vignettes of the African diaspora

Caryl Phillips' Booker Prize shortlisted "Crossing The River" (CTR) about the emergence of an African diaspora arising from the slave trade with the African colonies is a collection of seemingly unrelated vignettes spanning over 100 years which share the same emotional core. Each of the four segments making up CTR is a cry from the soul, which poignantly if not bitterly captures the essence of the cultural dislocation suffered by those sold to foreign lands. Some, like Nash in "Pagan Coast", imbibe the Christian values of their colonial masters but experience the pull of their native calling when they are set free and returned as missionaries. Others like Martha, from "West", suffer the misery, indignity and hopelessness that only chattels should know. Phillips isn't out to demonise the white man. He leaves it to us to judge. How do we doubt do-gooder Edward's sincerity in making Nash into a new man ? But then there is also skipper James Hamilton's indifference to the cruelty meted out to slaves in the title segment. The final segment "Somewhere in England" doesn't seem to belong but it does. The strong emotional resonance that these stories evoke is what binds them together. Phillips also displays his literary genius and stylistic versatility in using different styles for the different segments. His Conrad-influenced prose in "Pagan Coast" boasts some of the most beautiful and fluent writing ever. On "Somewhere in England", he comes across like a contemporary novelist using prose punctuated by thought fragments. "CTR" brings four separate but all desperately heartrending stories together. The names of the three children - 2 boys and a girl - sold to slavery by their father in an act of desperate foolishness and named Nash, Martha and Taylor, all make their appearances. They are the countless nameless who consititute the African diaspora today. CTR is a brilliantly constructed and devastatingly powerful piece of work. Nobody interested in serious literature should miss it !

Powerful and beautiful

This is without a doubt one of the best books that I have ever read. Its stories are haunting in their insight into human beings. While extremely thought provoking, it is also beautiful and moving. I highly recommend this book.