Books

Caryl Phillips is an interesting writer. He writes in a confident, polemical way about the 'black experience' on both sides of the Atlantic. As Caryl Phillips points out in newspaper and magazine articles that make up his new book A New World Order, many black people, in both the US and the UK, have never felt quite 'at home'. Phillips's writing is all about not quite belonging, and is divided into the four corners of his world - the US, Africa, the Caribbean and Britain.

This riveting book is in part the story of how capitalism transformed the 14,000 islands in the Indonesian archipelago into a modern, capitalist, nation. It is an important story because Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation on earth.

I first read this little book many years ago. Yet I had forgotten how engagingly well written it was, and how stimulating, until I reread the new edition. What is History? began life as a series of lectures delivered in 1961, before then being broadcast on BBC radio and then turned into this book.