"Caryl Phillips's A View of the Empire at Sunset is the sweeping story of the life of the woman who became known to the world as Jean Rhys. Born Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams in Dominica at the height of the British Empire, Rhys lived in the Caribbean for only sixteen years before going to England. A View of the Empire at Sunset is a look into her tempestuous and unsatisfactory life in Edwardian England, in 1920s Paris, and then again in London. In 1936, a forty-five-year-old Rhys fulfiled her dream and made the journey back to the Caribbean. Six weeks later, she boarded a ship for England, filled with hostility for her home, never to return. A true literary feat, A View of the Empire at Sunset uncovers the mysteries of the past to illuminate the predicaments of the present, Probing the heart of alienation, exile, and family. It is as much a story about the beginning of the end of a system that sustained Britain for two centuries, wreking havoc on the lives of those who existed in the shadow of the empire, as it is a profound look into the life of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers."--