In contrast to most first- and second-generation Caribbean writers, Caryl "Caz" Phillips has been singularly successful from early on in his writing career. Few Caribbean writers can claim as Phillips does in a 1991 interview with C. Rosalind Bell, "I've made my living as a writer since I was 21." Since 1980 he has written and produced many plays and documentaries for the stage, radio, and television as well as published five novels and a collection of essays.

His work has received early recognition in the form of major awards, among them the 1984 BBC Giles Cooper Award for his radio play The Wasted Years; the 1985 Malcolm X Prize for Literature for his first novel, The Final Passage; the 1987 Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for Literature for his essay collection The European Tribe; and the 1992 London Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for the novel Cambridge (1991). Phillips was also listed...