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Extravagant Strangers

A Literature of Belonging

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Paperback
5.19"W x 8"H x 0.81"D   | 12 oz | 24 per carton
On sale Dec 29, 1998 | 336 Pages | 9780679781547

   Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling stranger/Of here and every where." In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes.  These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years.

   Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eightieth century African who became a friend to Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers," such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul; foreign émigrés, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai.  With the eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society.

© Michael Eastman
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies, and brought up in England. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. His novel Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, and an earlier novel, A Distant Shore, won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and currently lives in New York. View titles by Caryl Phillips
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About

   Shakespeare called Othello "an extravagant and wheeling stranger/Of here and every where." In this exciting anthology, Caryl Phillips has collected writings by thirty-nine extravagant strangers: British writers who were born outside of Britain and see it with clear and critical eyes.  These eloquent and incisive voices prove that English literature, far from being pure or homogenous, has in fact been shaped and influenced by outsiders for over two hundred years.

   Here are slave writers, such as Ignatius Sancho, an eightieth century African who became a friend to Samuel Johnson and Laurence Sterne; writers born in the colonies such as Thackeray, Kipling, and Orwell; "subject writers," such as C.L.R. James and V.S. Naipaul; foreign émigrés, such as Joseph Conrad and Kazuo Ishiguro; and postcolonial observers of the British scene, such as Salman Rushdie, Ben Okri, and Anita Desai.  With the eloquent and often inspiring collection, Phillips proves, if proof be needed, that the greatest literature is often born out of irreconcilable tensions between a writer and his or her society.

Creators

© Michael Eastman
Caryl Phillips was born in St. Kitts, West Indies, and brought up in England. He is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. His novel Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond Margins Award, and an earlier novel, A Distant Shore, won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and currently lives in New York. View titles by Caryl Phillips
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