A Shadow of Myself(2000)

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 father: 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.