Another Man in the Street

Reviews / Votes

This elegiac novel tracks a West Indian man's life in London over decades, exploring the emotional cost of leaving home and being met by hatred and rejection... refreshing... a fable-like, enigmatic tale * Guardian * A novel that delicately portrays the journey of a migrant caught between dreams of success and the harsh realities of life in post-war England * IRISH TIMES * A moving, accomplished study of the vulnerabilities carried and concealed by human beings on their journeys throughout the world * FINANCIAL TIMES * Deftly slender storytelling * DAILY MAIL * Phillips's first novel in seven years explores the complicated legacy of Windrush through the portrait of one West Indian man in London, from the 60s to the present day * Guardian, The books to look forward to in 2025 * A fable-like, enigmatic tale ... This elegiac novel tracks a West Indian man's life in London over decades, exploring the emotional cost of leaving home and being met by hatred and rejection * GUARDIAN, Book of the day * An engrossing, artfully constructed chronicle of lives tragically unfulfilled * MAIL ON SUNDAY * Nobody has caught the sorrows of the immigrant condition, the loneliness and the constant humiliations, with more consistency and range than Caryl Phillips. He's rewritten the history we too long took for granted and he's given us complex human beings, both men and women, whom otherwise we too often walk past without noticing. Another Man in the Street feels like a culmination of a life-long project, taking us through six decades of modern English history with a rending and searing compassion that offers no easy answers. This is an urgent and sobering call for post-war Britain to reckon honestly with itself -- PICO IYER Phillips is a writer with an intimate understanding of the Caribbean diaspora and the emotional tides which underpin it. A masterful stylist writing at the top of his powers, with nuance, precision and a deep humanity -- ANTHONY JOSEPH Here, finally, is migration's untold truth: not the hope of departure, and triumph of ambition, but the truer tale of thwarted expectations: the long echo that follows an irrevocable choice. In this finely wrought novel Phillips captures the ways in which our dreams of elsewhere can become another kind of exile, when we become caught between what was and what will never be. Another Man in the Street lays bare the desolate beauty and melancholy of those quietly breaking hearts -- AMINATTA FORNA Another Man in the Street is a sharply observed examination of the hopes and disappointments of the displaced and marginalised, both black and white. Using multiple narrative perspectives, it presents a compelling portrait of Britain from the view point of those whose voices are seldom heard -- JACQUELINE ROY Caryl Phillips offers an original and intense meditation on postwar immigration to England. Historical forces are broken down into brilliantly told stories of what people lost, what they sought, what they ended up with. Migration is abandonment more than it is arrival, so Phillips makes us speculate through the fates of characters not soon forgotten. This past has everything to do with where we are now in a time of whole populations on the move -- DARRYL PINCKNEY Praise for Caryl Phillips: 'Remarkable -- WILLIAM BOYD Phillips is a lyrical, transporting stylist * SUNDAY TIMES * One of Britain's pre-eminent writers * GUARDIAN * One of the literary giants of our time * NEW YORK TIMES * Phillips is a linguistic and cultural virtuoso * THE TIMES *