A Shadow of Myself by Mike Phillips

by Mike Phillips

Attending a film festival in Prague, black documentary film maker Joseph Coker is approached by a complete stranger claiming to be his brother. George Coker, who has been brought up in East Germany by his Russian mother, tells Joseph that they share the same Kofi Coker, a Ghanaian now living in London. Joseph's reluctant acceptance of the relationship propels him into a nightmare world of intrigue and murder, where warnings are delivered by way of a severed head, where sex -- like love -- is sudden and treacherous. George is trapped in a web of violence and corruption woven by his associates in the criminal gangs of the former Soviet Union, and it's as if he has become Joseph's dark shadow, threatening his very identity.Behind them both is the enigmatic figure of Kofi, an idealistic African whose time in Kruschev's Moscow led to betrayal and planted the seeds of tragedy in the next generation.A Shadow of Myself is the new, hugely ambitious novel from one of our leading black writers. Both thriller and love story, it is set against the backdrop of post-Cold War Europe and the impact of the Third World on its future. Gripping and moving, it traces the lives of its characters from the fifties to the present day, as they move between the clashing ideologies of East and West.

Paperback

First published May 15, 2000

About the author

Mike Phillips was born in Georgetown, Guyana. He came to Britain as a child and grew up in London. He was educated at the University of London and the University of Essex, and gained a Postgraduate Certificate of Education at Goldsmiths College, London.

He worked for the BBC as a journalist and broadcaster between 1972 and 1983 on television programmes including The Late Show and Omnibus, before becoming a lecturer in media studies at the University of Westminster. He has written full-time since 1992. He is best known for his crime fiction, including four novels featuring black journalist Sam Dean: Blood Rights (1989), which was adapted for BBC television, The Late Candidate (1990), winner of the Crime Writers' Association Macallan Silver Dagger for Fiction, Point of Darkness (1994) and An Image to Die For (1995). The Dancing Face (1997) is a thriller centred on a priceless Benin mask. His most recent novel, A Shadow of Myself (2000), is a thriller about a black documentary filmmaker working in Prague and a man who claims to be his brother. He is currently working on a sequel.

Mike Phillips co-wrote Windrush: The Irresistible Rise of Multi-Racial Britain (1998) to accompany a BBC television series telling the story of the Caribbean migrant workers who settled in post-war Britain. His book, London Crossings: A Biography of Black Britain (2001), is a series of interlinked essays and stories, a portrait of the city seen from locations as diverse as New York and Nairobi, London and Lodz, Washington and Warsaw.

His latest book is Kind of Union (2005).