Caryl Phillips

In the early Sixties, Victor 'Lucky' Johnson arrives in London from St Kitts, with dreams of becoming a journalist. Lucky soon finds work first at an Irish pub in Notting Hill - then as a rent collector for an unscrupulous slum landlord Peter Feldman

Shadowing Lucky from his early struggles in London to the present day, Caryl Phillips paints a striking portrait of a flawed but vividly alive man grappling with the lifelong disillusionments of exile - and the uniquely complicated identity of the...

A sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves. At its centre is Monica Johnson, cut off from her parents after falling in love with a foreigner, and her bitter struggle to raise her sons in the shadow of the wild moors of the North of England.