Final Passage

Caryl Phillips's first novel tells the story of Leila, a nineteen-year-old woman living on a small Caribbean island in the 1950s. Unsatisfied with life on the island, Leila decides to leave her friends and follow her mother overseas, taking her restless husband Michael and her young son with her. Her subsequent passage to England brings her face to face with the consequences of the decisions she has made to determine her life on her own terms.

Review: The Final Passage marks the debut of a talented writer...Phillips writes a nicely elegant prose, has a sharply observant eye, and the effect is truthful, modest and convincing * Guardian *

Like Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Phillips writes of times so heady and chaotic and of characters so compelling that time moves as if guided by the moon and dreams * Los Angeles Times Book Review *

One of the literary giants of our time * New York Times *