The Strangers: Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them - Couverture rigide

Eshun, Ekow

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0241472024 ISBN 13 : 9780241472026

Editeur : Hamish Hamilton, 2024

Synopsis

LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE JHALAK PRIZE 2025

A Book of the Year 2024 in the Guardian, Times Literary Supplement and Observer

Richly 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 genre-defying: The Strangers is an outstanding book' Bernardine Evaristo

'Luminous and extraordinary... This book will be referenced for years to come' Lemn Sissay

In 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: million-pound 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 to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Ekow Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, editor, curator, broadcaster, and author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity. He writes for publications including the New York Times, Financial Times and Guardian, and has created documentaries for BBC4 and BBC Radio 4.

Eshun was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and the first Black director of a major arts organisation. He has curated exhibitions internationally, including 2023's critically acclaimed, landmark project In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery and the British Film Institute, and The Time is Always Now, a major study of contemporary Black portraiture, at London's National Portrait Gallery (2024). He is currently Chairman of the Fourth Plinth committee, overseeing London's most significant public art programme, and Creative Director of the Calvert 22 Foundation.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

In 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 a

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Hamish Hamilton
• Date d'édition: 2024
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0241472024
• ISBN 13: 9780241472026
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 400
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Europaallee 1; Bad Hersfeld; 36244; Allemagne