Foreigners [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Caryl Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 23, 2007

A powerful and affecting new book from Caryl Phillips: a brilliant hybrid of reportage, fiction, and historical fact that tells the stories of three black men whose lives speak resoundingly to the place and role of the foreigner in English society.

Francis Barber, “given” to the great eighteenth-century writer Samuel Johnson, more companion than servant, afforded an unusual depth of freedom that, after Johnson’s death, hastened his wretched demise . . . Randolph Turpin, who made history in 1951 by defeating Sugar Ray Robinson, becoming Britain’s first black world-champion boxer, a top-class fighter for twelve years whose life ended in debt and despair . . . David Oluwale, a Nigerian stowaway who arrived in Leeds in 1949, the events of whose life called into question the reality of English justice, and whose death at the hands of police in 1969 served as a wake-up call for the entire nation.

Each of these men’s stories is rendered in a different, perfectly realized voice. Each illuminates the complexity and drama that lie behind the simple notions of haplessness that have been used to explain the tragedy of these lives. And each explores, in entirely new ways, the themes—at once timeless and urgent—that have been at the heart of all of Caryl Phillips’s remarkable work: belonging, identity, and race.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

SignatureReviewed by Kate ChristensenAlong with interest and admiration, I read parts of Caryl Phillips's new book, Foreigners, with, I confess, a mixture of bemused perplexity and thwarted expectations, wondering, what is this guy up to here? The rather stodgy historical passages coexist somewhat uneasily with the more fluid and lyrical fictionalized accounts. The three sections rub up against each other with a fierce but not quite cohesive energy. But in the end, the book is a bleakly ironic examination of what it means to be Other—historically and socially—through the stories of three very different black men in England. The first section, Doctor Johnson's Watch, is narrated by a late–18th-century journalist who sets out to write a piece for a gentleman's magazine about Francis Barber, the Jamaican boy who was given in the early 1750s to Dr. Samuel Johnson, of the famous Dictionary. Dr. Johnson raised the negro as his ward until his death; he gave him his freedom and a generous pension, which Barber squandered. At the end of the narrative, Barber, lying on the verge of death in a squalid pauper's hospital, offers poignant insight into the nature of freedom and otherness, insight that the journalist, despite good intentions, may not be prepared to receive.The second section, Made in Wales, is narrated in a hard-boiled third person that traces the rise and fall of Randy Turpin, the mixed-race boxer who beat Sugar Ray Leonard in 1951 to become, briefly, middleweight champion of the world, then fell, inevitably, the narrative suggests, into hapless debt and ruin. The third, final, most riveting and beautifully written section, Northern Lights, is told by a chorus of voices who cobble together the mysterious life and death of David Oluwale, a 20th-century version of Bartleby, a stowaway from Nigeria who washes up in Leeds in 1949 and ends his life stubbornly homeless, willfully persecuted and in 1969, drowned.Interestingly, Phillips goes into none of these three black men's consciousnesses or psyches. The reader stands some distance away from them with the narrators; except for Barber's piercing, frank lament, we don't get any direct emotional information from any of them. This narrative strategy is essential to the book's intent, as is, I suspect, the uneasiness it provoked in me along the way. Phillips gets at real-life complexities in a visceral, nondidactic way: there are no victims or heroes here. I finished the book hearing Melville's Ah humanity! echoing back through its pages.Kate Christensen's fourth novel, The Great Man , was published last month by Doubleday.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In each of his somberly beautiful and lacerating books, Phillips, a virtuoso, prizewinning novelist with a biographer's avidity for fact, tells the stories of individuals caught up in the African diaspora, and ponders the question of how one retains a sense of self under the annihilating onslaught of racism. In this elegiac triptypch, he reclaims the lives of three black men in England, deciphering the toxic social chemistry that first gave each man hope, and then destroyed him. Francis Barber, brought to England from Jamaica at age 10, became Dr. Johnson's most trusted companion during the great literary genius' wretched last days, only to fall into an abyss of poverty and prejudice. Randolph Turpin, a mixed-race Englishman, astonished the world in July 1951 by winning a match against Sugar Ray Robinson, but Britain's first black champion boxer lost his bout with a hostile world. David Oluwale, a bright and ambitious Nigerian teenager, stowed away on a ship to England, intent on becoming an engineer. Instead he became the target of racist and sadistic policemen. A lone freedom fighter, he stood up to his attackers, who murdered him in 1969. As each elegantly restrained yet finely detailed tragic tale portrays a cruelly and unjustly condemned man and reveals hidden facets of English history, Phillips' brilliantly realized and indelible novel of remembrance poses an unspoken yet inevitable question, have things changed for "foreigners" of color? Seaman, Donna

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf (October 23, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400043972
• ISBN-13: 978-1400043972
• Product Dimensions: 5.4 x 1.1 x 8.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,222,151 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Caryl Phillips is the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction. His novel A Distant Shore won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, and his other awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stories of Black and White, December 3, 2007

By 

Friederike Knabe (Ottawa, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foreigners (Hardcover)

Three historical figures, black or mixed-race, living at very different times in England, are the subject of Caryl Phillips's latest book. Two of them had come at a young age from the West Indies and West Africa respectively, the third was a son of an immigrant father and a white English mother. They have in common their belief that England is their home and their yearning to fit into the society of their time. All three marry into English families and raise families of their own. However, as a result of changing circumstances, they each end up in misery and hopelessness. In a merging of fictional reportage, memoir and description of historical facts, the author retraces their lives and the gradually more hostile environments leading to their unhappy end.

Francis Barber came to England as a young slave, gained his freedom and became the long time servant and companion of Samuel Johnson, the famous 18th century literary figure. Randolf Turpin turned into a national boxing hero around 1950, culminating in his briefly gaining the middleweight world championship. Finally, David Oluwale arrived in England in 1949 from his native Nigeria as a young stowaway and settled in the industrial region of Leeds. He became known as the first victim of racially motivated police brutality leading to his death in 1969.

Each story is self-contained - unconnected to the others. The links are the underlying themes of a black British subject's struggle to belong to "his" country. As an outsider in the "home" country, they must come to terms with a society that they inadequately understand and that is less than helpful in easing their adaptation and integration.

In attempting to place the stories in their true context, Phillips applies a different narration style to each tale. Barber's story is told in the voice of an 18th century gentleman journalist and his stilted language makes this story deliberately awkward and irritating reading. The narrator professes his liberal views, claiming to correct the general poor regard people have for Barber following his master's death. His stated empathy with his subject does not hide the deeply felt prejudices against blacks of the time. Turpin's anonymous biographer shows more sympathy for the man and the challenges he faced and goes into great detail describing them. Brought up in very modest circumstances by his widowed mother, "Randy" followed his brothers into a boxing career. His surprise rise to fame and title, brought sudden wealth to a young man, completely unprepared for a life of luxury and the management of his affairs. His numerous sudden "friends" exploited his generosity and kindness. His aggressive side, which led him into boxing in the first place, was particularly evident in his treatment of his women. The fame and fortunes, however, were short-lived and the poverty and misery that followed eventually broke him, despite the loving support of his young family.

In the third story, the author takes a very different narrative approach. The case of David Oluwale is a mosaic of a multitude of voices - time witnesses, each giving their own personal view and perspective on the man and his life in Leeds. They include a young girl, a social worker, another Nigerian immigrant, a doctor and, of course, the police. Nobody knows him well enough, yet the views vary from "quiet, educated, well-dressed and polite" to "unkempt, violent, sub-normal and savage". It is up to the reader to draw their own picture. Interleaved with the David's personal story, Phillips, who was born in Leeds, goes into disproportionate length and detail about the city's history through the ages and its role in the industrial revolution in Britain. While it adds some context to the narrative, it does divert the reader's attention away from the primary topic of the story. David's death led to a trial against two police officers known to have pursued and haunted him consistently. The tragedy of a life, started with great hope and idealism, ends after numerous periods in police custody, years in a mental institution and finally living on the street.

Phillips presents his readers with detailed portraits of the three men and their circumstances. While their stories are colourful, in describing them from the perspective of contemporary, yet outside observers, he sidesteps any discussion of the inner turmoil his subjects must have experienced. At a general level, his narrative expose problems of racial integration that have relevance today, yet he avoids specifics, except for the last case. In many ways, David's story is the most moving of the three, yet also devastating in its implications for the society at the time and since. Overall, the author remains in a grey zone between fact and fiction. The details of Turpin's story appear to be a factual account of his life without many creative elements beyond it. It is also unclear, for example, whether the statements by witnesses at the trial after David's death refer to actual quotes or imagined comments to fit the author's interpretation of David's profile. Phillips doesn't provide any sources or references to further reading on the three individuals. In the case of David, that could be seen as a serious omission as the research by Kester Aspden was well underway Nationality: Wog: The Hounding of David Oluwale. [Friederike Knabe]

5.0 out of 5 stars Precious Lives, July 31, 2011

By 

Gregg Chadwick - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foreigners (Hardcover)

Caryl Phillips writes with great power and beauty. Many of his books create a world in which the familiar becomes unfamiliar, as Phillips often writes from the point of view of new immigrants. Caryl Phillips latest work, "Foreigners: Three English Lives", combines three separate tales of black men in Great Britain. All three characters are based on actual individuals whose biographies are mixed by Philips with invented narration and moment.

The first novella concerns Francis Barber who found himself in an awkward place as both servant and friend to the 18th century English intellectual Dr. Johnson - who is best remembered as the originator of the dictionary. The second novella brings us up to the 1950's as we consider boxer Randy Turpin and his surprising defeat of the champion Sugar Ray Robinson for boxing's middleweight title in a fierce match in 1951. The third novella tracks, through multiple viewpoints and voices, the death of David Oluwale at the hands of the British police in 1968.

Caryl Phillips, by combining three disparate experiences of black men in Britain, forces us to break free from our stereotypes and look at Barber, Turpin and Oluwale as individuals. The three men are united by the color of their skin and the prejudices they experienced, but their separate and precious lives stand out as jewels on velvet. Highly recommended.

4.0 out of 5 stars An important look at being a black man in England, March 21, 2008

By 

Sergio (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Foreigners (Hardcover)

My strongest overall impression of this work is the apparent deterioration in the treatment of black men in England between the first story (1700s) and the third and last story (mid to late 1900s). Phillips brings us the mostly tragic true (but embellished) stories of three black men from English history - Dr. Johnson's servant; a boxing champion; and an African immigrant. Dr. Johnson's servent seems to come to a tragic end mostly due to his own inability to find his way after his long-term employer's death. Turpin, the boxer, is much his own worst enemy, but is also "fed upon" by white and black hangers-on, and the white community which was his home failed to provide support or assistance once he was no longer a star. The African immigrant's story, however, is more like that of an American inner-city black - a story of closed doors, no opportunity, hopelessness, and police brutality, at a time when the idea that racial prejudice is inhumane was just beginning to be more generally accepted.

Overall, an interesting and fairly enjoyable read. Certainly educational. That combined with the importance of the subject matter make this a strongly recommended work.

The memoirist/reporter style is a bit dry for the long haul, but the structure and the subject matter provide plenty to keep the reader plugged in. The multiple voices in the last story, switching without much warning and often without clear identification, make it a bit difficult. But it does achieve the documentary feel that is apparently intended.