Exploring issues of colonialism and race in literature, novelist Phillips (The Nature of Blood) here brings together 32 essays, book reviews, articles, interviews and introductions, divided into four sections the "Africa" of his ancestry, the "Caribbean" of his birth, the "Britain" of his upbringing and the "United States" where he now resides. The American writers he treats (Baldwin, Wright, Wideman) are well-known, and Fanon, Gordimer and Kincaid have been widely read here, but most of Phillips's attention is given to less popular writers from his other homes the French- as well as the English-speaking Caribbean: Glissant, Chamoiseau, along with Walcott and Lamming; the South African Coetzee and the Nigerian Soyinka; from Britain, the 18th-century Sancho and the 21st-century Zadie Smith.