The Water Dancer

✍ Scribed by Ta-Nehisi Coates

• Publisher: Penguin
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 243 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

The unmissable debut novel by the critically acclaimed author of Between the World and Me and We Were Eight Years in Power - a richly imagined and compulsively page-turning journey to freedom
OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK

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'I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved... I wish Toni [Morrison] was alive to actually read this book. She would be so proud' - Oprah
Hiram Walker is born into bondage on a Virginia plantation. But he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won't discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family - his adoptive mother, Thena, a woman of few words and many secrets, and his beloved, angry Sophia - and into the covert heart of the underground war on slavery.
Hidden amidst the corrupt grandeur of white plantation society, exiled as guerrilla cells in the wilderness, buried in the coffin of the deep South and agitating for utopian ideals in the North, there exists a widespread network of secret agents working to liberate the enslaved. Hiram joins their ranks and learns fast but in his heart he yearns to return to his own still-enslaved family, to topple the plantation that was his first home. But to do so, he must first master his unique power and reclaim the story of his greatest loss.
Propulsive, transcendent and blazing with truth, The Water Dancer is a story of oppression and resistance, separation and homecoming. Ta-Nehisi Coates imagines the covert war of an enslaved people in response to a generations-long human atrocity - a war for the right to life, to kin, to freedom.
'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. Right up there in the top five. I was enthralled, I was devastated. I felt hope, I felt gratitude, I felt joy... [Ta-Nehisi Coates] is a magnificent writer' Oprah
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Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of September 2019: Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of one of the most important nonfiction books of this decade, Between the World and Me , which means that his fiction debut arrives with a great amount of anticipation. Would the urgency of his nonfiction writing come through in a novel? Would he be as nimble in a made-up world? Would it be good? The answer to all of these questions is a resounding yes. Coatess novel is the story of Hiram Walker, who was born into slavery on a Virginia plantation that is owned by his white father and experiencing a slow decline. Although Hiram is gifted with a photographic memory, his motherwho was sold away when he was youngis the one thing he cannot remember. Indeed, many of the women in his life are taken away from him too earlya fact that will guide his actions later in the novel. The story blends the brutality of history with more imaginative elements: for example, white people are called the Quality, black people are called the Tasked; and Hiram possesses powers that fall into the spectrum of magical realism. As the novel moves north to Philadelphia, where Hiram grows into his own and begins working for the Underground, and eventually turns back to his southern birthplace, the fantastical elements only give greater power to the story. The Water Dancer is a stirring debut, and Coates is the novelist we were hoping he would be. --Chris Schluep

Review

Hiram tells a tale with many harrowing subplotsand moments of great beauty. . . . Coates is an exceptional prose stylist. . . . [His] depiction of the cruelty inflicted on slaves is unflinching. And with great care and insight, he shows us how Hiram and those he loves find sustenance in shared hopes and memories. . . . Coates is among the finer nonfiction writers of his generation.This potent book about Americas most disgraceful sin establishes him as a first-rate novelist. The San Francisco Chronicle [ The Water Dancer* ]feels like a natural bridge . . . and the product of a lot of carefully considered passion, too. Nearly every paragraph is laced through with dense,gorgeously evocative descriptionsof a vanished world and steeped in its own vivid vocabulary. Entertainment Weekly*