Higher Ground

Caryl Phillips was born in St Kitts and now lives in London and New York. He has written for television, radio, theatre and cinema and is the author of twelve works of fiction and non-fiction. Crossing the River was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize and Caryl Phillips has won the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, as well as being named the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 1992 and one of the Best of Young British Writers 1993. A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2004 and Dancing in the Dark was shortlisted in 2006.

"The second story in particular is probably the best thing Phillips has ever done" Financial Times "Remarkable... every page of Phillips writing is convincing, a frightful part of our collective consciousness" Washington Post "Higher Ground is about the destruction of lives, about damage done in one generation being passed on to another. Phillips' book has an urgency and intensity which demands that you read more... to take account of what the voices he has imagined have to say" London Review of Books "Caryl Phillips has proved himself among the best and most productive writers of his generation" The Times "The understated relation between the three parts is haunting and the whole is a work of total conviction" Sunday Times