'Empire At Sunset' Provides A Mesmerizing View Of Jean Rhys

Caryl Phillips' latest novel, based on the troubled life of the writer Jean Rhys, is a lush exploration of the costs of colonialism, the limited possibilities for non-conformist women, and egregious power imbalances between genders and races. Rhys' life — she was born in the British colony of Dominica in 1890 and sent to school in England at 16 — is a fitting canvas for Phillips' perennial themes of displacement, alienation and muddled identity.

It's easy to understand whyis not the first evidence of Rhys' impact on Phillips: His last novel, painted a nightmarish early childhood for Heathcliff as part of a haunting take on Emily Brontë's — much as Rhys' her extraordinary response to Charlotte Brontë's imagined a powerful back-story for Rochester's first wife, the madwoman in the attic.