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 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 'Caryl Phillips has proved himself among the best and most productive writers of his generation' New York Times '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