Awards
- 2007: Essence Literary Award Finalist for Foreigners
- 2006: PEN/Beyond Margins Award for Dancing in the Dark
- 2006: Honorary Fellow, The Queen's College, Oxford University
- 2004: Caribbean American Heritage Award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature
- 2004: Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Finalist in Fiction for A Distant Shore
- 2004: Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book for A Distant Shore
- 2004: Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction Finalist for A Distant Shore
- 2004: National Book Circle Critics Finalist in Fiction for A Distant Shore
- 2002: Mar Del Plata Film Festival, Argentina Silver Ombu for Best Screenplay for The Mystic Masseur
- 2002: Mel and Lois Tukman Fellow of the New York Public Library's Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers
- 2000: Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
- 1999: The University of the West Indies Humanities Scholar of the Year
- 1994: Lannan Literary Award
- 1994: James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River
- 1994: Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency
- 1993: The Booker Prize shortlist for Crossing the River
- 1992: The (London) Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year for Cambridge
- 1992: Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship
- 1987: The Martin Luther King Memorial Prize for The European Tribe
- 1985: Malcolm X Prize for Literature for The Final Passage
- 1984: BBC Giles Cooper Award "Best Radio Play of the Year" for The Wasted Years
- 1984: The British Council Fiftieth Anniversary Fellowship
- 1984: Arts Council of Great Britain Bursary in Drama