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Book Summary and Reviews of Another Man in the Street by Caryl Phillips

Another Man in the Street by Caryl Phillips

Another Man in the Street

A Novel

by Caryl Phillips

  • Publishes:
  • Jan 7, 2025, 240 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Caryl Phillips, who "pits himself against any kind of received wisdom" (London Review of Books), gives us a hypnotic, heartbreaking novel lit by the bright and changing lights of 1960s London.

In London's swinging sixties, Victor Johnson, a young immigrant from the Caribbean, arrives in Britain with dreams of becoming a journalist in the "mother country." Instead, he finds work collecting rent for Peter Feldman, a landlord equally kind and unscrupulous, and then falls into a relationship with Peter's lonely secretary Ruth, herself a migrant from the north of England.

Spanning nearly half a century, and set against the backdrop of a country which is slowly, reluctantly, evolving into a modern, multiracial society, we discover the truth of both Peter's tragic background and Ruth's agonizing secret, and witness Victor, out of his depth, adjusting to the painful realities of life in his new country.

Both epic in its sweep and devastatingly intimate in its portrayal of damaged lives all caught between two worlds, Another Man in the Street lays bare the traumas that often overtake personal relationships in the wake of transforming societies, and the high price of attempting to reinvent oneself.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Unfortunately, none of the characters are magnetic or fully drawn enough to hold the reader's attention. This doesn't reach the heights of this Phillips's best work." —Publishers Weekly

This information about Another Man in the Street was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Caryl Phillips Author Biography

Photo: Mariana Cook

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction including Dancing in the Dark, Crossing the River, and Color Me English. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and his other awards include a Lannan Foundation Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in New York.

Link to Caryl Phillips's Website

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