Description

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction

Caryl Phillips’ ambitious and powerful novel spans two hundred and fifty years of the African diaspora. It tracks two brothers and a sister on their separate journeys through different epochs and continents: one as a missionary to Liberia in the 1830s, one a pioneer on a wagon trail to the American West later that century, and one a GI posted to a Yorkshire village in the Second World War.

‘Epic and frequently astonishing’
The Times

‘Its resonance continues to deepen’
New York Times

Publisher Review

"A compassionate, forceful and profoundly moving revelation" * Scotland on Sunday * "[T]here are gems of impassioned writing quilted within this ambitious cross-cultural novel of loss and reconciliation" * Sunday Times * "Epic and frequently astonishing" * The Times * "Crossing the River is dense with event and ingeniously structured. It requires concentration and is worth it" * Independent * "An ambitious exploration of oppression, loss and reconciliation that employs a collage of styles and ranges across continents and centuries" -- Nicci Gerrard * Observer *