Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates wächst in den 1980er-Jahren in Baltimore auf - als die Stadt am Abgrund taumelt: Armut und Drogenkriminalität prägen den Alltag, Chaos und Gewalt stellen für den schwarzen Jungen eine permanente Bedrohung dar. Er muss schnell lernen, sich in dieser feindlichen Umgebung zu behaupten - und sein Vater Paul ist ihm ein guter Lehrer: Der Black-Panther-Aktivist und autodidakte Verleger lehrt Ta-Nehisi wie man auf den Straßen von Baltimore überlebt, wie man vorankommt im Leben und es schließlich sogar bis an die Universität schafft. THE BEAUTIFUL STRUGGLE ist eine bewegende Vater-Sohn-Geschichte über die Herausforderungen der gesellschaftlichen Realität, in die wir hineingeboren werden, und über die Liebe, die uns davor beschützt.

THE NEW YORK TIMES #1 BESTSELLER OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully todayHiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom. Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, 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 and into the heart of the underground war on slavery... 'A transcendent work from a crucial political and literary artist' Diana Evans 'I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates' Toni Morrison

Bisher kannte Hiram Walker nichts als ein Leben in Ketten. Aufgewachsen in der Sklaverei, musste er als kleiner Junge miterleben, wie seine Mutter verkauft wurde und für immer verschwand. Doch sie hat ihm eine seltene Gabe vererbt. Als diese ihn vor dem Ertrinken rettet, beschließt er aus der Gefangenschaft zu fliehen.So beginnt für Hiram eine abenteuerliche Reise von den Tabakplantagen West Virginias über geheime Guerillazellen in der Wildnis des amerikanischen Südens nach Philadelphia, wo ihn ein völlig neues Leben in Freiheit zu erwarten scheint.Doch zuvor muss er noch eine alte Rechnung begleichen und die Frau, die er liebt, und die, die ihn aufzog, in die Freiheit führen.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENTHailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone)NAMED ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 BEST BOOKS OF THE 21ST CENTURY • NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURYONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, O: The Oprah Magazine, The Washington Post, People, Entertainment Weekly, Vogue, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New York, Newsday, Library Journal, Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden?Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERThe renowned author returns with a timely book about his journeys to three sites of conflict - Dakar, South Carolina, and Palestine - exploring how the stories we tell, and the ones we don't, shape our realities.'An earnest and intimate exploration of locations of extreme injustice' Oprah Daily***Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, but soon found himself grappling with deeper questions about the destructive myths that shape our world.First we join Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa - a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination.He then takes readers to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology - visibly on display in its segregationist statues.Finally in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality on the ground.Written at a dramatic moment in American and global history, this work from one of our most important writers is about the urgent need to embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.***'Coates exhorts readers, including students, parents, educators, and journalists, to challenge conventional narratives that can be used to justify ethnic cleansing or camouflage racist policing' Booklist'Coats always writes with purpose . . . These pilgrimages for him, ground his powerful writing about race' Associated Press

"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories -- our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking -- expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist -- and named for Nubian pharaoh -- Coates had never set foot on the African continent until now. He roams the 'steampunk' city of 'old traditions and new machinery, ' meeting with strangers and dining with local writers who quiz him in French about African American politics. But everywhere he goes he feels as if he's in two places at once: a modern city in Senegal and a mythic kingdom in his mind, the pan-African homeland he was raised to believe was the origin and destiny for all black people. Finally he travels to the slave castles off the coast and touches the ocean that carried his ancestors away in chains -- and has his own reckoning with the legacy of the Afrocentric dream. Back in the USA he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he explores a different mythology, this one enforced on its subjects by the state. He enters the world of the teacher whose job is threatened for teaching one of Coates's own books and discovers a community of mostly white supporters who were transformed and even radicalized by the stories they discovered in the 'racial reckoning' of 2020. But he also explores the backlash to this reckoning and the deeper myths and stories of the community -- a capital of the confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over the its public squares. In Palestine, the longest of the essays, he discovers the devastating gap between the narratives we've accepted and the clashing reality of life on the ground. He meets with activists and dissidents, Israelis and Palestinians -- the old, who remember their dispossessions on two continents, and the young who have only known struggle and disillusionment. He travels into Jerusalem, the heart of Zionist mythology, and to the occupied territories, where he sees the reality the myth is meant to hide. It is this hidden story that draws him in and profoundly changes him -- and makes the war that would soon come all the more devastating"--