What do you think?
Rate this book
The Nature of Blood
The Nature of Blood is an unforgettable novel about loss and persecution, about courage and betrayal, and about the terrible pain yet absoulte necessity of human memory.
A young Jewish woman growing up in Germany in the middle of the twentieth century and an African general hired by the Doge to command his armies in sixteenth century Venice are bound by personal crisis and momentous social conflict. What emerges is Europe's age-old obsession with race, with sameness and difference, with blood.
A young Jewish woman growing up in Germany in the middle of the twentieth century and an African general hired by the Doge to command his armies in sixteenth century Venice are bound by personal crisis and momentous social conflict. What emerges is Europe's age-old obsession with race, with sameness and difference, with blood.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
37 people are currently reading
496 people want to read
About the author
Caryl Phillips
51 books215 followers Caryl Phillips was born in St.Kitts and came to Britain at the age of four months. He grew up in Leeds, and studied English Literature at Oxford University.
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
He began writing for the theatre and his plays include Strange Fruit (1980), Where There is Darkness (1982) and The Shelter (1983). He won the BBC Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play of the year with The Wasted Years (1984). He has written many dramas and documentaries for radio and television, including, in 1996, the three-hour film of his own novel The Final Passage. He wrote the screenplay for the film Playing Away (1986) and his screenplay for the Merchant Ivory adaptation of V.S.Naipaul's The Mystic Masseur (2001) won the Silver Ombu for best screenplay at the Mar Del Plata film festival in Argentina.
His novels are: The Final Passage (1985), A State of Independence (1986), Higher Ground (1989), Cambridge (1991), Crossing the River (1993), The Nature of Blood (1997), A Distant Shore (2003), Dancing in the Dark (2005), In the Falling Snow (2009), The Lost Child (2015), A View of the Empire at Sunset (2018) and Another Man in the Street (2025). His non-fiction: The European Tribe (1987), The Atlantic Sound (2000), A New World Order (2001), Foreigners (2007), and Colour Me English (2011). He is the editor of two anthologies: Extravagant Strangers: A Literature of Belonging (1997) and The Right Set: An Anthology of Writing on Tennis (1999). His work has been translated into over a dozen languages.
He was named Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year in 1992 and was on the 1993 Granta list of Best of Young British Writers. His literary awards include the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a British Council Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Fellowship, and Britain's oldest literary award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, for Crossing the River which was also shortlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize. A Distant Shore was longlisted for the 2003 Booker Prize, and won the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize; Dancing in the Dark won the 2006 PEN/Beyond the Margins Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and the Royal Society of the Arts, and recipient of the 2013 Anthony N. Sabga Caribbean Award for Excellence.
He has taught at universities in Ghana, Sweden, Singapore, Barbados, India, and the United States, and in 1999 was the University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year. In 2002-3 he was a Fellow at the Centre for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library. Formerly Henry R. Luce Professor of Migration and Social Order at Columbia University, he is presently Professor of English at Yale University. He is an Honorary Fellow of The Queen's College, Oxford University.
A regular contributor to The Guardian and The New Republic, his most recent book is, Another Man in the Street.
(taken from carylphillips.com official web site)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
November 22, 2020
My fifth Caryl Phillips book. He’s fast becoming a favorite. Phillips is a surprising writer. His gifts lie in achronological narrative sequencing—the author seems to despise the chronological—deft POV shifts, shrewd omission, a prose style of great dignity, and (at times) stark brevity.
This starts as a Shoah story. Eva tells her tale of being in the konzenstrationslager. She’s lost everyone. A second thread is about a judgement rendered in 15th century Venice against Jewish bankers accused of the notorious blood libel. A third story line is the first-person tale of a man of color, a general, contracted by the doge of Venice to fight the “infidel” Turk, who seduces (is seduced by) a high-ranking senator’s daughter whom he marries on the eve of battle.
Then toward the end the storylines temporally merge and collapse. We begin to hear from secondary characters, such as the calumniated Jews on their way to the stake, and Eva’s doomed sister, Margot, found in hiding. We begin to hear the general’s second thoughts (he has a family in Africa). We slip in and out of dreams. But the reader is never confused; everything links up elegantly. I have read much about Shoah and the camps, but some of the images here truly disturb. The end of Eva is heartbreaking.
So, not for the faint of heart. If this book interests you then let me recommend Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest, which is also fiction, and nonfiction from Primo Levi, all of it, and Steven J. Zipperstein’s Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.
This starts as a Shoah story. Eva tells her tale of being in the konzenstrationslager. She’s lost everyone. A second thread is about a judgement rendered in 15th century Venice against Jewish bankers accused of the notorious blood libel. A third story line is the first-person tale of a man of color, a general, contracted by the doge of Venice to fight the “infidel” Turk, who seduces (is seduced by) a high-ranking senator’s daughter whom he marries on the eve of battle.
Then toward the end the storylines temporally merge and collapse. We begin to hear from secondary characters, such as the calumniated Jews on their way to the stake, and Eva’s doomed sister, Margot, found in hiding. We begin to hear the general’s second thoughts (he has a family in Africa). We slip in and out of dreams. But the reader is never confused; everything links up elegantly. I have read much about Shoah and the camps, but some of the images here truly disturb. The end of Eva is heartbreaking.
So, not for the faint of heart. If this book interests you then let me recommend Martin Amis’s The Zone of Interest, which is also fiction, and nonfiction from Primo Levi, all of it, and Steven J. Zipperstein’s Pogrom: Kishinev and the Tilt of History.
March 6, 2018
This fucked me up in the best way. I love the writing style, and even though we saw so little of each of them, I felt really intensely connected to the characters. Especially Eva. God, Eva.
I mean, it's about the Holocaust in some ways, and in other ways just about the nature of racism and evil and all the rest of it. So it's...heavy, and it's hard. But it's a short read and if you can stomach its heavy, dark subject matter, I highly recommend it.
I mean, it's about the Holocaust in some ways, and in other ways just about the nature of racism and evil and all the rest of it. So it's...heavy, and it's hard. But it's a short read and if you can stomach its heavy, dark subject matter, I highly recommend it.
May 11, 2025
La novela comienza con los pioneros del Estado de Israel, esperando en un campo de refugiados en Chipre la autorización de la administración británica para ir ingresando, en cuentagotas, al territorio palestino. Posteriormente se abren tres historias, que se irán relacionando como una estructura de capas (a las que se agregará al final una cuarta capa).
Las primeras dos historias, giran en torno a la persecución de judíos en distintos momentos históricos: la primera, narrada por la joven Eva Stern, quien en un estado de inanición crónica, observa y narra la llegada de las tropas británicas que liberan el campo de concentración en el que ha logrado sobrevivir los últimos dos años.
"Los hombres se gritan y silban unos a otros mientras saltan del camión. A continuación se abate el silencio entre ellos. Permanecen en pie, mirándonos. Algunos se llevan las manos a la boca y la nariz, mientras otros extraen pañuelos y los oprimen contra sus rostros. Ante el silencioso espectáculo de nosotros contemplándolos. Esqueletos frente hombres, antiguos prisioneros frente a sus libertadores."
La otra, en el siglo XV, describe una paranoia colectiva que lleva a un pueblo de la República de Venecia a construir una narrativa que termina autoconvenciéndose de la veracidad de una supuesta conducta sacrílega de los lideres del Gueto judío.
"Y mientras el niño se desangraba, los presentes escupían blasfemias contra el Salvador y su Madre, llamándola a ella ramera, y a él como el muerto 'nacido fuera del matrimonio'. "
Y adoptando una postura indignada reclaman su castigo a las autoridades, quienes, a pesar de la conveniencia de proteger a los judíos, se ven frente a una situación como la de Poncio Pilatos, con la posibilidad de tener que liberar a Barrabás.
La tercera transcurre en el mismo tiempo de la anterior. Con cierta inocencia un bravo guerrero moro es reclutado por el astuto Dux de Venecia para liderar sus tropas, para frenar el avance de las tropas turcas (otomanas). La narración adopta un lenguaje florido, pomposo y formal, que contribuye a crear una atmósfera propia de la época, aunque por momentos se hace árido (al modo lo que se puede encontrar en la escritura de Julien Gracq).
Y como el autor es negro, tiene un permitido para emitir duras palabras respecto al guerrero:
"Y así, atiendes todos su caprichos, como el negro Tío Tom que eres.
Librando las guerras del hombre blanco por él/
Delantero centro en el ejército veneciano/
El sonriente Louis Armstrong de la República/
blandiendo su espada como una trompeta.
Estás perdido, Oh poderoso, Oh débil criatura, negro patético; formas parte de todos los demasiado débiles para ligar su presente con su pasado, demasiado ingenuos.."
De esta manera, el autor relaciona el ensañamiento europeo contra los judíos y con el aplicado a los negros. En el primer caso, por temor (y envidia) a su astucia e inteligencia; en el segundo por un desprecio que se reserva para los seres humanos considerados inferiores. A riesgo de ofender a algunas almas sensibles, me parece ilustrativo un clásico chiste racista:
"Pregunta: Si debes matar a un negro y a un judío ¿A quién matas primero? Respuesta: Primero al judío y luego al negro, porque primero está el deber y luego el placer."
La cuarta historia, más breve, es una nueva capa que se monta sobre toda la estructura. Presenta el fenómeno de la migración de etíopes (negros) a Israel, legitimado por el mito de la historia de Menelek, y así como provee cierto cierre, abre un nuevo dilema respecto a una nueva dialéctica del amo y el esclavo o el del lugar de la víctima y el victimario.
Un libro muy original, crudo, erudito e inteligente, de este bravo escritor que no se detiene ante ninguna convención social, y que a pesar de todo lo que ya se escribió sobre estos temas, logra echar una luz nueva, y con una muy buena narración y personajes muy bien caracterizados.
Una novela sorprendente y de gran calidad.
Caryl Phillips es un escritor británico nacido en 1958 en San Cristóbal y Nieves en las Antillas. Un enfant terrible a tener en cuenta.
Las primeras dos historias, giran en torno a la persecución de judíos en distintos momentos históricos: la primera, narrada por la joven Eva Stern, quien en un estado de inanición crónica, observa y narra la llegada de las tropas británicas que liberan el campo de concentración en el que ha logrado sobrevivir los últimos dos años.
"Los hombres se gritan y silban unos a otros mientras saltan del camión. A continuación se abate el silencio entre ellos. Permanecen en pie, mirándonos. Algunos se llevan las manos a la boca y la nariz, mientras otros extraen pañuelos y los oprimen contra sus rostros. Ante el silencioso espectáculo de nosotros contemplándolos. Esqueletos frente hombres, antiguos prisioneros frente a sus libertadores."
La otra, en el siglo XV, describe una paranoia colectiva que lleva a un pueblo de la República de Venecia a construir una narrativa que termina autoconvenciéndose de la veracidad de una supuesta conducta sacrílega de los lideres del Gueto judío.
"Y mientras el niño se desangraba, los presentes escupían blasfemias contra el Salvador y su Madre, llamándola a ella ramera, y a él como el muerto 'nacido fuera del matrimonio'. "
Y adoptando una postura indignada reclaman su castigo a las autoridades, quienes, a pesar de la conveniencia de proteger a los judíos, se ven frente a una situación como la de Poncio Pilatos, con la posibilidad de tener que liberar a Barrabás.
La tercera transcurre en el mismo tiempo de la anterior. Con cierta inocencia un bravo guerrero moro es reclutado por el astuto Dux de Venecia para liderar sus tropas, para frenar el avance de las tropas turcas (otomanas). La narración adopta un lenguaje florido, pomposo y formal, que contribuye a crear una atmósfera propia de la época, aunque por momentos se hace árido (al modo lo que se puede encontrar en la escritura de Julien Gracq).
Y como el autor es negro, tiene un permitido para emitir duras palabras respecto al guerrero:
"Y así, atiendes todos su caprichos, como el negro Tío Tom que eres.
Librando las guerras del hombre blanco por él/
Delantero centro en el ejército veneciano/
El sonriente Louis Armstrong de la República/
blandiendo su espada como una trompeta.
Estás perdido, Oh poderoso, Oh débil criatura, negro patético; formas parte de todos los demasiado débiles para ligar su presente con su pasado, demasiado ingenuos.."
De esta manera, el autor relaciona el ensañamiento europeo contra los judíos y con el aplicado a los negros. En el primer caso, por temor (y envidia) a su astucia e inteligencia; en el segundo por un desprecio que se reserva para los seres humanos considerados inferiores. A riesgo de ofender a algunas almas sensibles, me parece ilustrativo un clásico chiste racista:
"Pregunta: Si debes matar a un negro y a un judío ¿A quién matas primero? Respuesta: Primero al judío y luego al negro, porque primero está el deber y luego el placer."
La cuarta historia, más breve, es una nueva capa que se monta sobre toda la estructura. Presenta el fenómeno de la migración de etíopes (negros) a Israel, legitimado por el mito de la historia de Menelek, y así como provee cierto cierre, abre un nuevo dilema respecto a una nueva dialéctica del amo y el esclavo o el del lugar de la víctima y el victimario.
Un libro muy original, crudo, erudito e inteligente, de este bravo escritor que no se detiene ante ninguna convención social, y que a pesar de todo lo que ya se escribió sobre estos temas, logra echar una luz nueva, y con una muy buena narración y personajes muy bien caracterizados.
Una novela sorprendente y de gran calidad.
Caryl Phillips es un escritor británico nacido en 1958 en San Cristóbal y Nieves en las Antillas. Un enfant terrible a tener en cuenta.
July 29, 2015
Num livro pouco coeso, consegui retirar "alimento" da história de Eva.
(Não sei porque ali está a história paralela do General Africano ao serviço da República de Veneza)
(Não sei porque ali está a história paralela do General Africano ao serviço da República de Veneza)
May 14, 2023
This was so hard, emotionally and narratively speaking imo 💔
January 26, 2018
THE NATURE OF BLOOD was written by Caryl Phillips, a West Indian author raised in England, who has written many texts, fiction and nonfiction, which engage with the subject of diasporic postcolonialism. In his novels, Jews and Blacks appear as co-sufferers of the dark side of Modernity.
In this ambitious novel, he interweaves several different narratives and points of view.
The main story is Eva Stern's, a young German Jew who survives the loss of her family and her own suffering in a concentration camp in WWII. However, her "liberation" doesn't seem to free her from the pain of the memories or the guilt of having survived when so many died horrendously.
There is also the story of her uncle Stephan, who abandons his wife and child to participate in the building of the new state of Israel. And there is a retelling of the story of Othello and his passion for Desdemona and his fruitless attempt to blend into Venetian society.
The text requires some effort to negotiate its steep shifts in temporality and points of view, which make the reader experience the kinds of disorientation and displacement felt by the characters themselves. The tone is bleak and tragic: there is nothing in this novel like the slapstick comedy you will find in Zadie Smith's novels. Indeed, Eva's first person narrative is modelled, to a certain degree, on Anna Frank's spare and precise record of her life in hiding. In Phillips' work there is no question of homogenising different histories of persecution and displacement into a joyous "migrant experience" like we can find in Smith's novels. There is no laughter and no hope of an easy solution for the problem of the diasporic postcolonial identity. Possibly, Phillips is not read so much because of this.
Phillips has an original voice and his texts deserve to be read much, much more. If you are seriously interested in the subject of postcolonialism and diaspora this book is a must read.
In this ambitious novel, he interweaves several different narratives and points of view.
The main story is Eva Stern's, a young German Jew who survives the loss of her family and her own suffering in a concentration camp in WWII. However, her "liberation" doesn't seem to free her from the pain of the memories or the guilt of having survived when so many died horrendously.
There is also the story of her uncle Stephan, who abandons his wife and child to participate in the building of the new state of Israel. And there is a retelling of the story of Othello and his passion for Desdemona and his fruitless attempt to blend into Venetian society.
The text requires some effort to negotiate its steep shifts in temporality and points of view, which make the reader experience the kinds of disorientation and displacement felt by the characters themselves. The tone is bleak and tragic: there is nothing in this novel like the slapstick comedy you will find in Zadie Smith's novels. Indeed, Eva's first person narrative is modelled, to a certain degree, on Anna Frank's spare and precise record of her life in hiding. In Phillips' work there is no question of homogenising different histories of persecution and displacement into a joyous "migrant experience" like we can find in Smith's novels. There is no laughter and no hope of an easy solution for the problem of the diasporic postcolonial identity. Possibly, Phillips is not read so much because of this.
Phillips has an original voice and his texts deserve to be read much, much more. If you are seriously interested in the subject of postcolonialism and diaspora this book is a must read.
June 7, 2016
This thoughtful, passionate and heady novel threads together stories of people separated by time and space but linked together in one way or another however tenuously.
What threads the different sagas together is the theme of the loneliness of the outsider struggling to find their way in an alien society.
The novel includes stories written from the viewpoint of a German Jewish girl who survives the horrors of the Holocaust and the British internment in Cyprus, where the British interned hundreds of thousands of Jews to prevent them returning to their ancient homeland, in order to appease Arab greed. Vivid descriptions of the horrors of the Holocaust and the shattered lives of the survivors.
After all this is it too much for the world to live with a tiny homeland (smaller than Wales) for the Jewish people where they can live in safety in peace, in a region where Arabs control 22 states?
It also focuses on her uncle, who sacrifices all to go to the then 'Palestine' to rebuild the Jewish homeland, and of an Ethiopian Jewish girl's life decades later as anew refugee in Israel.
The trial of the Jews of the Venice ghetto faced with persecution and prejudice and the horrific blood libels designed to frame them for persecution (relevant at a time when modern blood libels are today are used to justify hatred of Israel and the Jewish people today in order to prepare the world for another Holocaust).
Through his observations of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, the newly arrived Black Moorish general in Venice, Othello, is introduced to the saga-serving in a society both alien and hostile, and his romance with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Venetian nobleman.
The concurrent theme is one of suffering, survival and renewal, the tragic repetitions of history, and the voices and emotions of the very real individuals caught up in the vast and cruel sweep of history.
What threads the different sagas together is the theme of the loneliness of the outsider struggling to find their way in an alien society.
The novel includes stories written from the viewpoint of a German Jewish girl who survives the horrors of the Holocaust and the British internment in Cyprus, where the British interned hundreds of thousands of Jews to prevent them returning to their ancient homeland, in order to appease Arab greed. Vivid descriptions of the horrors of the Holocaust and the shattered lives of the survivors.
After all this is it too much for the world to live with a tiny homeland (smaller than Wales) for the Jewish people where they can live in safety in peace, in a region where Arabs control 22 states?
It also focuses on her uncle, who sacrifices all to go to the then 'Palestine' to rebuild the Jewish homeland, and of an Ethiopian Jewish girl's life decades later as anew refugee in Israel.
The trial of the Jews of the Venice ghetto faced with persecution and prejudice and the horrific blood libels designed to frame them for persecution (relevant at a time when modern blood libels are today are used to justify hatred of Israel and the Jewish people today in order to prepare the world for another Holocaust).
Through his observations of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice, the newly arrived Black Moorish general in Venice, Othello, is introduced to the saga-serving in a society both alien and hostile, and his romance with the beautiful daughter of a wealthy Venetian nobleman.
The concurrent theme is one of suffering, survival and renewal, the tragic repetitions of history, and the voices and emotions of the very real individuals caught up in the vast and cruel sweep of history.
September 8, 2009
Really thought-provoking novel - quite disturbing as the overall theme is about man's inability to be be accepting of others who don't really fit in.
At first the seemingly unconnected stories which pop up at random rather irritated me as I was keen to follow Eva's story of surviving the Holocaust. But it becomes clear that each of these stories serve a dual purpose: first to show that throughout history the same terrible treatment of fellow humans has continued to be repeated and secondly to encourage comparisons between Eva and other individuals suffering persecution.
The theme of integration - or lack of - is touched upon on almost every page. A few egs - Eva's parents inablity to get on with each other stemmed from the class system in their childhood; Margot, despite attempts to integrate her into Christian society, was kept alienated; Eva found it impossible to relate to other prisoners from Eastern Europe; Uncle Stephan in Palestine still found it impossible to connect with other Jews; Malka could not understand why they had been encouraged to move to Israel when it was apparent that they would never be accepted; etc etc
In some of the stories Phillips develops this theme a stage further. It is one thing to be rejected by society as a whole for reasons of faith, culture and skin colour but when that rejection comes following a period of apparent acceptance the result is complete bewilderment and despair. In particular the Jews of Portobuffole, accepted as part of the established community were used as scapegoats to explain the diappearance of a young boy; to be cont.
At first the seemingly unconnected stories which pop up at random rather irritated me as I was keen to follow Eva's story of surviving the Holocaust. But it becomes clear that each of these stories serve a dual purpose: first to show that throughout history the same terrible treatment of fellow humans has continued to be repeated and secondly to encourage comparisons between Eva and other individuals suffering persecution.
The theme of integration - or lack of - is touched upon on almost every page. A few egs - Eva's parents inablity to get on with each other stemmed from the class system in their childhood; Margot, despite attempts to integrate her into Christian society, was kept alienated; Eva found it impossible to relate to other prisoners from Eastern Europe; Uncle Stephan in Palestine still found it impossible to connect with other Jews; Malka could not understand why they had been encouraged to move to Israel when it was apparent that they would never be accepted; etc etc
In some of the stories Phillips develops this theme a stage further. It is one thing to be rejected by society as a whole for reasons of faith, culture and skin colour but when that rejection comes following a period of apparent acceptance the result is complete bewilderment and despair. In particular the Jews of Portobuffole, accepted as part of the established community were used as scapegoats to explain the diappearance of a young boy; to be cont.
September 7, 2015
This was my first time reading Phillips, and I was amazed that nobody had recommended him to me before; I’ll be reading the rest of his books in short order. Phillips is careful to particularize the experiences of different people/s (both the individual and, more to the point, the group), yet his use of collage reveals surprising affinities between the stories. “Affinities” is the best word I can think of to describe that effect, and these affinities are the reason you should read the book. There is no true link or likeness between the stories of Othello and of Eva, the concentration camp survivor whose story also bears an affinity to the life of Anne Frank, but there are unexpected affinities that result from juxtaposition, word choice, and the other intervening stories. It’s a subtle, artful effect.
http://alisonkinney.com/2014/07/24/ca...
Thanks!
http://alisonkinney.com/2014/07/24/ca...
Thanks!
August 19, 2012
Terrible, terrible, terrible. The single worst book I was ever forced to read. Stupid, self-important, offensive, badly-written, condescending... just awful on every level.
Read
December 31, 2024muy enfadada por que este sea mi último libro del año. (a no ser…)
January 10, 2025
Few books have caused me to sob as much as this one. The parallels of history resonate deeply.
September 25, 2009
descriptive, intense. mr. phillips again, tried to dissect a man and the roots that created the man.
history, origin... unquenched obsessions that he has.
'a river should never forget its spring.' someone said this somewhere in the page.
i was captivated by the story of an african noble turned slave. pride turned into shame. and who creates the scale anyway. then again, a jewish woman in europe. trying to conceal her roots.
again.. why should anyone be?
his stories took me traveling inside so many skin color. asking if any is different.
then... after some of his book. i learn myself anthropology.
hahaha.
it's a good book.... read over a decade ago.
but i still remember how i felt when i read it.
rather good i say...
or maybe i was just young... and too easy to be impressed.
history, origin... unquenched obsessions that he has.
'a river should never forget its spring.' someone said this somewhere in the page.
i was captivated by the story of an african noble turned slave. pride turned into shame. and who creates the scale anyway. then again, a jewish woman in europe. trying to conceal her roots.
again.. why should anyone be?
his stories took me traveling inside so many skin color. asking if any is different.
then... after some of his book. i learn myself anthropology.
hahaha.
it's a good book.... read over a decade ago.
but i still remember how i felt when i read it.
rather good i say...
or maybe i was just young... and too easy to be impressed.
February 16, 2014
A powerful novel about the nature of race and ethnicity. Phillips' ability to enter the minds of a young Jewish woman and Othello before Shakespeare's story is beyond amazing. He illustrates how Jews, African-Americans, Othello, Jewish Ethiopians, Israel's founders--men and women--share the same traumas and insights. His book is the epitome of a "new ethnicity." What a brilliant, brilliant writer.
April 6, 2016
I'm ambivalent a out this book. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to get it. Apart from the forced link between Othella and the Venetian ghetto and a sense of both the "moor" and the Jews as outsiders, I didn't understand the structure of the book. Eve's story is hauntingly sad and a different perspective on the Holocaust experience but I was still left bemused by the point of the interlinking stories.
November 13, 2017
I recognize that is is quite a good novel, but alas it failed to connect with me. The prose sections dealing with the Holocaust narrative were well done - grim and emotive as one might expect, but the curious structure of this book - cut up dictionary definitions and snippets of an Othello story were distracting. In same ways this book was made smaller (for me) by the sum of its parts.
January 22, 2011
A powerful novel that despite its short length tackles deep themes linked to 'otherness', race and anti-Semitism.
In terms of Holocaust literature it is harrowing in its descriptions. Certainly a tragedy in the Shakespearian sense.
It is beautifully written.
January 26, 2016
It took a few pages to get into it (I much prefer books that can get me hooked with the first line!) but was definitely worth the read. The different timelines chosen where unexpected but great choices and the historical context gave the book that extra layer of intensity.
August 3, 2024
The linkage of blood purity to racism is insufficiently explored in my opinion, with Joel Kovel’s ‘White Racism – A Psychodrama’ being the outstanding example of the terrain which should be better explored. I picked up Caryl Phillips book in the hope that this might have been attempted in this reconstruction of antisemitism and colour racism but generally felt this fell short of the mark.
There are several stories being told here, moving backwards and forwards in time and the key accounts of a young woman, Eva, who barely survives the Nazi persecution intermixing with the life of a Moorish soldier-of-fortune who served the Venetian Republic in the sixteenth century being the key texts. The man who came down to us as Othello felt the barbs of prejudice which centred on the colour of his skin, whilst Eva died a thousand deaths because of her Jewish ethnicity. Is there any link between the two to be made on the basis of the tale that Phillips tells us?
Calling his book the Nature of Blood opens the way to the idea of a primordial form of racism that predated the anxieties over skin colour that seem to have emerged at the onset of the modern period, around the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries in Europe. Before this date, reaching back thousands of years, there is a profound belief that blood measured the integrity of a human community, but that it could also be easily polluted by supernatural agency. The most obvious example of this is the superstition that menstrual blood could blunt the weapons that men wielded and ruin their chances in hunting or waging warfare. On the inverse side, this same menstrual blood bound women into a potentially malign sisterhood who could influence the phases of the moon and the stars and challenge the patriarchal power which underpinned the integrity of the tribal community.
Before there was the racism that we experience today there was the sense that the blood of lower orders – not just aliens but people of lower caste and servile social status – could pollute the nobility of the dominant clans and bring about their ruin. All of these potent prejudices preoccupied the minds of people who, by the time of the Iron Age, had begun to acquire a sense of historical time and who could think of the society that would continue to exist long after they were dead. People with the ‘wrong’ blood posed an existential threat to the preservation of the order established by people with the ‘right’ blood and this justified harsh measure to restrict their interactions with the society of the nobles.
Then Christianity came along, evolving in a short space of time around its obsession with the blood sacrifice of the messiah and the ritualisation of the consumption of his body in the rite which secured the solidarity of the community of faith. Outside this band stood one group in particular, the Jews, whose offensiveness was underscored by the fact that, despite their honoured position under the previous heavenly dispensation, had rejected the saviour and participated in his death agony. The perversity of the Jews grew greater as the legend of the blood libel took it grip on medieval Christianity, with the virtuous consumption of the blood of Christ in the mass being paralleled in the imagination of people of that faith by the belief that the forsaken tribe murdered Christian children in order to mix their blood in the matzos used in Pesach rituals.
The centrality of blood as a measure of integrity began to take on a semi-scientific hue in the early modern period when animal husbandry began in earnest its work in improving the stock of the beasts. The notion of bloodlines was particularly important in Spanish ruling circles in relation to the breeding of horses and falcons. It was at this point, when the task of providing the newly acquired territories in the Americas with the labour forces they needed that attention turned to the idea of a group of people, who by virtue of their race (blood heritage) could best function as labourers. The emerging slave trade with West Africa attached skin colour to the idea that the darker-skinned people of the world had within their veins a blood type that fitted them to slavery on an industrial scale. The fact that this was a quality of their blood needs to be emphasised, with the belief becoming fixed that the possession of ‘one drop’ of Black blood rendered an individual fit for slavery whatever their skin colour.
Phillips offers a set of stories which tell the consequences of race prejudice but which are uneven with regard to the experience of Jews persecuted in the late medieval and Nazi periods, and the Moorish general who once served as governor of Cyprus. What we don’t get to learn about is the ‘nature of blood’ which links antisemitic genocide to its real comparator, the African genocides which began with the slave trade. There is no real consideration of blood and its nature here as a consequence, though the tale of the Moorish general is well-told and can be enjoyed on its own terms. Eva’s story, on the other hand, can never be considered with anything other than deep revulsion against the worst depravities that human beings can ever be guilty of.
There are several stories being told here, moving backwards and forwards in time and the key accounts of a young woman, Eva, who barely survives the Nazi persecution intermixing with the life of a Moorish soldier-of-fortune who served the Venetian Republic in the sixteenth century being the key texts. The man who came down to us as Othello felt the barbs of prejudice which centred on the colour of his skin, whilst Eva died a thousand deaths because of her Jewish ethnicity. Is there any link between the two to be made on the basis of the tale that Phillips tells us?
Calling his book the Nature of Blood opens the way to the idea of a primordial form of racism that predated the anxieties over skin colour that seem to have emerged at the onset of the modern period, around the fourteenth or fifteenth centuries in Europe. Before this date, reaching back thousands of years, there is a profound belief that blood measured the integrity of a human community, but that it could also be easily polluted by supernatural agency. The most obvious example of this is the superstition that menstrual blood could blunt the weapons that men wielded and ruin their chances in hunting or waging warfare. On the inverse side, this same menstrual blood bound women into a potentially malign sisterhood who could influence the phases of the moon and the stars and challenge the patriarchal power which underpinned the integrity of the tribal community.
Before there was the racism that we experience today there was the sense that the blood of lower orders – not just aliens but people of lower caste and servile social status – could pollute the nobility of the dominant clans and bring about their ruin. All of these potent prejudices preoccupied the minds of people who, by the time of the Iron Age, had begun to acquire a sense of historical time and who could think of the society that would continue to exist long after they were dead. People with the ‘wrong’ blood posed an existential threat to the preservation of the order established by people with the ‘right’ blood and this justified harsh measure to restrict their interactions with the society of the nobles.
Then Christianity came along, evolving in a short space of time around its obsession with the blood sacrifice of the messiah and the ritualisation of the consumption of his body in the rite which secured the solidarity of the community of faith. Outside this band stood one group in particular, the Jews, whose offensiveness was underscored by the fact that, despite their honoured position under the previous heavenly dispensation, had rejected the saviour and participated in his death agony. The perversity of the Jews grew greater as the legend of the blood libel took it grip on medieval Christianity, with the virtuous consumption of the blood of Christ in the mass being paralleled in the imagination of people of that faith by the belief that the forsaken tribe murdered Christian children in order to mix their blood in the matzos used in Pesach rituals.
The centrality of blood as a measure of integrity began to take on a semi-scientific hue in the early modern period when animal husbandry began in earnest its work in improving the stock of the beasts. The notion of bloodlines was particularly important in Spanish ruling circles in relation to the breeding of horses and falcons. It was at this point, when the task of providing the newly acquired territories in the Americas with the labour forces they needed that attention turned to the idea of a group of people, who by virtue of their race (blood heritage) could best function as labourers. The emerging slave trade with West Africa attached skin colour to the idea that the darker-skinned people of the world had within their veins a blood type that fitted them to slavery on an industrial scale. The fact that this was a quality of their blood needs to be emphasised, with the belief becoming fixed that the possession of ‘one drop’ of Black blood rendered an individual fit for slavery whatever their skin colour.
Phillips offers a set of stories which tell the consequences of race prejudice but which are uneven with regard to the experience of Jews persecuted in the late medieval and Nazi periods, and the Moorish general who once served as governor of Cyprus. What we don’t get to learn about is the ‘nature of blood’ which links antisemitic genocide to its real comparator, the African genocides which began with the slave trade. There is no real consideration of blood and its nature here as a consequence, though the tale of the Moorish general is well-told and can be enjoyed on its own terms. Eva’s story, on the other hand, can never be considered with anything other than deep revulsion against the worst depravities that human beings can ever be guilty of.
May 20, 2012
A must read.
June 11, 2020
Caryl Phillips is a highly respected writer whose fiction addresses contemporary topics from a historical perspective. He typically layers time and space in ways that provide comparisons and critiques. The Nature of Blood is such a novel. It asks us to consider the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel in the light of historically significant experiences Jews have suffered, the Shoah and the Blood Libel of 1490, in Venice. I enjoyed the book deeply and expect to read it again one day. I wish it were longer. My one quibble is a familiar cry from me - writing errors - a couple of vocabulary collapses - latter for later was one - and three times a "thought in my mind" or "thought to myself" which irritates me because it is one of those unconsidered redundancies I see in undergraduate writing every semester of my life and am always going after. It would help my cause greatly if great writers would support me just a little by not allowing omniscient speakers to let characters "think in their minds." I've read two of Phillps's books and both lean on The Great Gatsby for the end lines. I am glad someone is doing it - borrowing one of Fizgerald's great moments - because Gatsby ends exquisitely and Fitzgerald is not likely to be much read in future. The idea that as the waters of the earth carry us in the present, they simultaneously transport us into the past is both beautiful and true to the way we experience time - thematically.
December 7, 2025
Frankly, this book is offensive. Had i not been required to finish it for school, I would have given up. To give credit where credit is due, it is quite well written and the non-linear style is appealing in its uniqueness. Its most redeeming factor is the storyline set in the 1400s which does a decent job of explaining that antisemitism is a tale as old as time. This being said, I began the book with hesitation to read about my culture as written by a man who does not share it. Even in the first few pages, I was thrown off by the use of the name Palestine when, if this man had truly done his research, the character would have probably referred to the land as Eretz Yisrael. Then, the book redeems itself with some of Eva’s introduction. Unfortunately this goes south quickly. The insertion of the Othello story does not fit and, maybe it’s a good story, but it seems very out of place here. Finally, we get this man’s descriptions of a concentration camp. I get that it was intended to be a brutally honest description of the horrors that our people endured but unfortunately, the way it is written, it comes off more like torture porn. The icing on the cake is really the last few pages which express a shockingly antizionist sentiment. If you are Jewish, if you knew any Holocaust survivors, even if you simply consider yourself an ally to Zionists, you do not need to read this book.
January 28, 2025
The Nature of Blood provides an arena for four largely disconnected stories to slug it out for control of the narrative. One is the story of Eva, a young Holocaust survivor who loses everything in life that mattered to her. Another is the story of Eva’s uncle, Stephan, to abandoned his family to fight for Israel’s independence. A third provides an account of a blood libel trial in 15th century Venice. The last is a retelling of the story of Othello.
Of the four, the story of Eva had the potential to be the most compelling, but even here, the narrative is flat. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s observation on how women curse. He said, “they know the words but not the music.”
Any of these threads could have been teased apart to create separate novels, but wound together, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The overall theme of the infectious nature of racism - and its destructive effects – is too commonplace to support what I felt was an extravagant narrative design.
Too bad.
Of the four, the story of Eva had the potential to be the most compelling, but even here, the narrative is flat. I am reminded of Mark Twain’s observation on how women curse. He said, “they know the words but not the music.”
Any of these threads could have been teased apart to create separate novels, but wound together, the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The overall theme of the infectious nature of racism - and its destructive effects – is too commonplace to support what I felt was an extravagant narrative design.
Too bad.
March 7, 2023
4.5 rounded down. Phillips does an amazing job with his descriptions of just how harrowing the holocaust was, and adding in Malka at the end is a really good way to hopefully get israeli readers to have some self awareness regarding racism that continues in Israel. The story of othello was also very interesting to read woven in. My half/whole point deduction comes from the fact that in portobofulle the narrator speaks very matter-of-factly about many truths and untruths regarding medieval jewish life. It may be hard for some readers to fully distinguish fact and fiction in this section. While I understand the purpose of including it, given the worldwide lack of proper holocaust education, let alone education of Jewish life in centuries prior, it seems like a dangerous oversight on Phillips' part. It was however incredibly well written and poignant with every page
December 1, 2020
Although this novel has many poignant moments, the juxtaposition of scenes from the holocaust with scenes from the Medieval persecution of Jews in Venice, with scenes from Jewish refugee camps in Cyprus, of British concentration camp "liberators" with British camp guards in Cyprus, with Othello the Black general who dares to marry the daughter of Venetian nobility, with an Ethiopian Jewish refugee in modern Israel is jarring. There is only a very loose narrative coherence and that detracted from the overall effect for me. This is an interesting and often disturbing novel about the nature of identity and national belonging but it did not move me the way it should have given the stories it presents and the themes it explores.
May 24, 2023
3.5/3.75
The themes and situations the novel deals with are ESSENTIAL to know and analyze… I felt so heartbroken most of the time I needed to stop reading because the pain was overwhelming. However, and even if I do understand the novel is crafted as if it was shattered/a mess/deconstructed because it mirrors the characters’ experiences/pain, I tend to dislike this kind of shape because it makes it harder for me not only to understand the boom but also to connect with the story. I must admit, nevertheless, that I felt its effect at its fullest during the second part of the novel: it really created an alluring effect that forbade me to stop reading.
The themes and situations the novel deals with are ESSENTIAL to know and analyze… I felt so heartbroken most of the time I needed to stop reading because the pain was overwhelming. However, and even if I do understand the novel is crafted as if it was shattered/a mess/deconstructed because it mirrors the characters’ experiences/pain, I tend to dislike this kind of shape because it makes it harder for me not only to understand the boom but also to connect with the story. I must admit, nevertheless, that I felt its effect at its fullest during the second part of the novel: it really created an alluring effect that forbade me to stop reading.
June 9, 2021
“I have survived. That is enough. I am grateful.”
Admittedly, I don’t quite understand the ending of this book. Though it’s not the typical book I pick up. A reread might be in store so I can pick up on all the details I missed.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this book. I much prefer Eva’s story to Othello (this could be from a bias because I did not like Othello by Shakespeare). It follows a character’s perspective I have never read, and the writing style really added to the effectiveness of story.
Sorry this is a very lackluster review.
Admittedly, I don’t quite understand the ending of this book. Though it’s not the typical book I pick up. A reread might be in store so I can pick up on all the details I missed.
Overall though, I really enjoyed this book. I much prefer Eva’s story to Othello (this could be from a bias because I did not like Othello by Shakespeare). It follows a character’s perspective I have never read, and the writing style really added to the effectiveness of story.
Sorry this is a very lackluster review.
Read
July 15, 2021Topics included: The Holocaust, Jewish diaspora, Racism, loss, courage, and betrayal.
The title is what stuck with me. Just the title? Well, no.. but it’s one of the things that I found to be cleverly put. The “nature of blood” can refer to one’s blood bond to a land that they have been born and bred on, along with the environmental changes one goes through - which alters the way in which one thinks, yet never tarnishes their blood. Fascinating stuff.
A wonderfully important text that I was fortunate to have read for a module during my Masters.
The title is what stuck with me. Just the title? Well, no.. but it’s one of the things that I found to be cleverly put. The “nature of blood” can refer to one’s blood bond to a land that they have been born and bred on, along with the environmental changes one goes through - which alters the way in which one thinks, yet never tarnishes their blood. Fascinating stuff.
A wonderfully important text that I was fortunate to have read for a module during my Masters.
May 23, 2023
I find the topic of the book a really important one that everyone should bear in mind. All those atrocities were really hard to read but I think everyone should, or must, be aware of them. As for the narrative style, I understand that, though the stream of consciousness and the lack of organisation and separation in the text, it mimics the situations Eva and the African general had to suffer, but I have ended the book and I still feel that there were unconnected parts which I didn’t and don’t know where to put.
February 18, 2025
First book I've read by Caryl Phillips. The writing is really beautiful and the stories very moving. Though I've read many books about the Holocaust, the story of Eva and her family is profoundly and unusually moving. As are all the tales which are unified by displacement and prejudice, prejudice which is often deadly. Yet, the book was confusing and certainly very unusual. The different stories are not presented as chapters and no attempt is made to connect them into one story. Still, beautifully written and haunting.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews