LONGLISTED 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 Evaristo'Luminous 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 which stretches from Africa to Europe

Binding: Paperback;400 pages; Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; Classification: BGF; Weight: 402 g; Dimensions: 197 x 130 x 27

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