The Atlantic Sound - Hardcover

Phillips, Caryl

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0571196209 ISBN 13: 9780571196203

Publisher: Faber and Faber, 2000

Synopsis

The Atlantic Sound is a travel book that is also a passionate argument with history: a personal quest to explore and fully understand the painful, ongoing legacy of the Atlantic slave trade. Phillips cruises through the Caribbean, observing everywhere the patronage of the United States. He explores Liverpool, constructed on the slave trade, now denying that history; Elmina in Ghana, site of a slave fort, now a tourist spot for black Americans; and Charleston in the American South, where one-third of black Americans were bought and sold. And Phillips retraces the journey he made to England from the Caribbean, as a child in 1958.

About this title

Review:

Caryl Phillips has established himself as one of the supreme chroniclers of African dispossession and exile. In previous works such as The European Tribe and Crossing the River, he documents the ironies of post-colonial history. Phillips' latest book is the kind that is best described as a "meditation", although it is also a fine and invigorating travel book. The subject of Phillips's broodings is that of displacement, diaspora, homelessness--all those things that ineluctably accompany any descendant of West African slaves. Phillips himself was born in St Kitts, West Indies in 1958, and so here he re-traces the first transatlantic journey he made with his mother in the late 1950s, by banana boat from the Caribbean to the grey shores of the Mother Country. He visits three cities central to the slave trade: Liverpool, Elmina in Ghana, and Charleston. Finally in Israel, he finds a community of 2,000 African-Americans who have lived in the Negev desert for 30 years. Wholly absorbing, always surprising, brilliantly observant, sensitive to human tragedy but never pessimistic, Phillips writes as beautifully as ever. "It is futile to walk into the face of history. As futile as trying to keep the dust from one's eyes in the desert."--Christopher Hart

Review:

"A lyrical survey that...elicit[s] and illuminat[es] the patterns and prejudices of race."
--"The New York Times Book Review
""Impressive, poignant.... A travel book crafted with the touch of a skilled novelist."
--"Time Out New York"
"A trenchant...book that sounds the depth of slavery’s legacy."
--"San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle"

"A lyrical survey that elicit[s] and illuminat[es] the patterns and prejudices of race."
--"The New York Times Book Review
""Impressive, poignant . A travel book crafted with the touch of a skilled novelist."
--"Time Out New York"
"A trenchant book that sounds the depth of slavery s legacy."
--"San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle""

"A lyrical survey that...elicit[s] and illuminat[es] the patterns and prejudices of race."
--The New York Times Book Review

"Impressive, poignant.... A travel book crafted with the touch of a skilled novelist."
--Time Out New York

"A trenchant...book that sounds the depth of slavery's legacy."
--San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber and Faber
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0571196209
• ISBN 13: 9780571196203
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240