M. NOURBESE PHILIP's first novel, Harriet's Daughter, was published in l988 by Heinemann (England) and The Women's Press (Canada). This book was one of two runners up in the l989 Canadian Library Association Prize for children's literature. Harriet's Daughter was also first runner up in the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature. 

For a decade, Harriet's Daughter was on the syllabus of the Caribbean Examinations Council’s  Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate syllabus for Moderns Languages and was studied by all children in the Caribbean receiving a high school CXC diploma. It is also widely used in high school curricula in Canada and Great Britain. 

A dramatized reading of the book has been published as an audio cassette and a  script for stage and was workshopped in Toronto by b-current. A German language edition of the book has also been published. 

Her second novel, Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, is a narrative in poetry and prose which was published in l991.