by Caryl Phillips (Author)
Caryl Phillips's The Lost Child is a sweeping story of orphans and outcasts, haunted by the past and fighting to liberate themselves from it. 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. Intertwined with her modern narrative is the ragged childhood of Emily Bronte's Heathcliff, the anti-hero of Wuthering Heights and one of literature's most enigmatic lost boys.
Written in the tradition of Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea and J.M. Coetzee's Foe, The Lost Child is a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Bronte's masterpiece. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Phillips recovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, getting at the heart of alienation, exile, and family by transforming a classic into a profound story that is singularly its own.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 03 Sep 2015
ISBN 10: 1780747985
ISBN 13: 9781780747989
Book Overview: 'A highly original narrative that is both startling and strangely moving.' -- James Lasdun 'With uncanny intimacy, eloquence, and compassion, Caryl Phillips stitches together past and present, the world of classic English literature and of hardscrabble, contemporary English life more movingly than ever before. The simple, startling result is that, after The Lost Child, English literature looks richer, more mysterious and more human.' -- Pico Iyer