The lost child - Caryl Phillips

Caryl Phillips'sThe Lost Childis 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 Bront's Heathcliff, the anti-hero ofWuthering Heightsand one of literature's most enigmatic lost boys.

Written in the tradition of Jean Rhys'sWide Sargasso Seaand J.M. Coetzee'sFoe, The Lost Childis a multifaceted, deeply original response to Emily Bronte's masterpiece. A critically acclaimed and sublimely talented storyteller, Phillipsrecovers 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.