A searing novel about slavery and its legacy that tells multiple stories, set generations and continents apart but unified by their ambitious exploration of themes of race, power, captivity, and abuse—from “a master ventriloquist [who] giv[es] immediacy and voice to an impressive range of vivid characters about whom the reader cares deeply" (
San Francisco Chronicle
).
In a slave garrison in Africa, a native collaborator betrays his people and humiliates himself in order to win the favor of white men. From an American prison cell in the 1960s, a black convict tries to impart his vision of race and justice to his indifferent family. And in a dreary city in postwar England, a displaced Jewish refugee watches her youth and sanity slip down the drain of history.
Combined and in the skilled hands of Phillips, these narratives take on a devastating power.