State of Independence - Softcover

Bertram Francis, a British West Indian, has spent the last 20 years away from the Carribean. Now independence is looming and he is going back to see the end of colonial rule. But the visit is not the nostalgic homecoming he expected as he finds himself an outsider in a place he thought was home.

Caryl Phillips was born in St Kitts, West Indies, in 1958. Brought up in England, he has written for television, radio, theatre and the screen.$$$He is the author of numerous books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Final Passage, Higher Ground, Cambridge, Crossing the River (shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize), The Nature of Blood, A State of Independence, Atlantic Sound and The European Tribe. He is also the editor of Extravagant Strangers and The Right Set, an anthology of writing on tennis. His adaptation of The Final Passage was directed by Peter Hall and screened by Channel Four. His awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a James Tait Black Memorial Prize. Since 1998 he has been Professor of English and Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Barnard College, Columbia University. He divides his time between homes in the UK and the USA.