Phillips has tackled themes on the African slave trade from many angles, and his writing is concerned with issues of "origins, belongings and exclusion", as noted by a reviewer of his 2015 novel The Lost Child.[18] The Atlantic Sound has been compared to the travel writing in Looking for Transwonderland, by Nigerian writer Noo Saro-Wiwa.[19]
Phillips's work has been recognised by numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King Memorial Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the 1993 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Crossing the River and the 2004 Commonwealth Writers' Prize Best Book award for A Distant Shore.
Phillips received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award for Dancing in the Dark in 2006.
