Crossing the river

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.

Crossing the River won the James Tait Black Memorial Award in 1994, and was shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize.