A Distant Shore | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

A Distant Shore

Nov 26, 2025 11:17 AM

Author:Caryl Phillips

A Distant Shore

The English village is a place where people come to lick their wounds. Dorothy has walked away from a bad thirty-year marriage, an affair gone sour and a dangerous obsession. Between her visits to the doctor and the music lessons she gives to bored teenagers, she is trying to rebuild a life.

It's not immediately clear why her neighbour, Solomon, is living in the village, but his African origin suggests a complex history that is at odds with his dull routine of washing the car and making short trips to the supermarket. Though all he has in common with the English is a shared language, it soon becomes clear that Solomon hopes that his new country will provide him with a safe haven. Gradually they establish a form of comfort in each other's presence that alleviates the isolation they both feel.

Reviews

A Distant Shore is a distillation of everything that makes Phillips's work so impressive: lucid, deceptively simple prose combined with huge ideas and complex emotions... One of those rare novels which successfully examines vast themes through the prism of small lives

—— Time Out

Suspenseful, atmospheric, adventurous

—— Independent

Phillips's clever novel about a society under increasing pressure to change won't fail to impress

—— Sunday Express

This is literary fiction at its very best - a gripping, character-driven novel that portrays the malaise of a whole society through the stories of two individuals

—— Sunday Tribune

One of the literary giants of our time

—— New York Times

An extraordinary, irreducible fantasy

—— Observer

Burgess's ambitious study of 20th-century history centers on the stormy relationship between an effete, popular novelist and a Faustian priest

—— Publishers Weekly

It is glitzy, glamorous, page-turning stuff with bite

—— Sarah Broadhurst

Chilling...will keep you guessing until the end

—— Psychologies

Chilling psychological thriller... Fact and fiction are cleverly blurred, and the intricately plotted spins and turns will keep you guessing till the end

—— Glamour

Intriguing... Real life tangles with his fantasy online world to create a heart-stopping page-turner

—— Good Housekeeping

Blueeyedboy is unquestionably a masterpiece of deception and fantasy

—— Oxford Times

A dark exploration into the mind of an internet-obsessed would-be killer

—— Red

Creepy psychodrama...BB's voice soon takes on the seductive cadences of her Gallic creations. Harris's triumph is to incorporate email-speak into this tale of rural nasties without frightening the horses

—— Independent

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