Volume 44, Number 17 · November 6, 1997
What We Like to Forget
By J.M. Coetzee
The Nature of Blood
by Caryl Phillips
Knopf, 212 pp., $23.00
Frantz Fanon, Martiniquan psychiatrist and interpreter of the black condition, used to recall the advice of one of his teachers: 'Whenever you hear anyone abuse the Jews, pay attention, because he is talking about you.'[1] Taking these words to heart, Caryl Phillips, in his new novel The Nature of Blood, follows a winding path through space and time to connect the ages-old persecution of the Jews of Europe with the sufferings of people of African descent. The result is a somber but powerful work of fiction, bolder in conception and more accomplished in execution than anything Phillips has done thus far.
Review, 3699 words
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