FINALIST FOR THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE 2026LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2025LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2025Richly imaginative and powerfully empathetic, an intimate portrait of five remarkable Black men, and a meditation on race, estrangement and the search for home.Thrilling and ingenious, propulsive and genredefying The Strangers is an outstanding book Bernardine EvaristoLuminous and extraordinary... This book will be referenced for years to come Lemn SissayIn the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type.What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask?In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson polar explorer. Frantz Fanon psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X activist leader. Justin Fashanu millionpound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future.Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics...

Binding: Paperback;288 pages; Publisher: TBS-Penguin Random House Wholesale; Classification: BGF; Weight: 402 g; Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 27

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