SOURCE: "Caryl Phillips Interviewed by Graham Swift," in Kunapipi, Vol. XIII, No. 3, 1991, pp. 96-103.

In the following interview, Phillips discusses the genesis of Cambridge and comments on the different cultural influences at work in his writings.

I first met Caryl, or Caz as I've come to know him, a few years ago at a literary jamboree in Toronto. I think we fulfilled all our official duties, but we spent a lot of time in a place in downtown Toronto called the Bamboo Club—one of those places which has acquired since a sort of metaphysical status, because whenever Caz and I have met again in some far-flung corner of the globe, it seems our first instinct has been to find out where the 'Bamboo Club' is. Caz, I confess, is a little bit better at finding it than I am.

Caz was born in 1958 in St. Kitts, one...