Description

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.

Publisher Review

Ekow Eshun is a genius. He holds a torch where institutions have refused to look and helps us all to see through shadows to the magnificent strangers. His writings on the Black aesthetic are unsurpassed - and my world is a better place because he is writing in it. This book will be referenced for years to come -- Lemn Sissay, author of 'My Name is Why' This book is astounding. Told with a rigour and intimacy that only Ekow Eshun could conjure... In a world where Blackness is synonymous with death, The Strangers portrays scenes of beauty, of fullness - of just what it means to be alive' -- Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of 'Open Water' Thrilling and ingenious, propulsive and genre-defying: The Strangers is an outstanding book. Ekow Eshun resurrects five pioneering figures, connecting them thematically to each other while constantly recalibrating the contexts around them, revealing wider global histories, cultures and patterns of power. Compelling and imaginatively expansive, this is something very special - creative non-fiction that inspires, stirs and challenges the reader -- Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize-winning author of 'Girl, Woman, Other' Beautiful, powerful and haunting, this book defies erasure with imagination and integrity -- Afua Hirsch, author of 'Brit(ish)' Staggering. Outside of Baldwin himself, I can't think of a creative approach to critique that hit me as hard as this. The storytelling, the archival work, the erudition and research behind it, the capacity for invention (down to the use of dialogue), and-one of my favourite aspects of this book-its singular, inventive use of form. It's rare to read a book that's so invigorating, intervening with freshness and new clarity in longstanding conversations; and that gives you such a striking new way of describing and seeing your own world. If this doesn't become a classic, then I don't know what ever could -- Jason Allen-Paisant, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning author of 'Self-Portrait as Othello' The Strangers is diamantine - multifaceted, sharp and exceptionally bright. I was captivated by its vivid depiction of these five Black lives -- Doireann Ni Ghriofa Wholly unique and important, written with great compassion and intelligence in Ekow Eshun's singular, arresting style. He says things that need to be said, with a sweeping eye on history and its impact on our present -- Diana Evans, author of 'Ordinary People' A beautifully written, haunting exploration of Black masculinity that pushes the boundaries of genre: part biography, part fiction, part essay, part historical record, woven together seamlessly to produce an original, rich and compelling narrative. It provides a vital insight into the importance of Black contributions to Western culture - contributions that have so often been denied. I can't praise The Strangers highly enough: its impact remains long after the final pages and it deserves to be widely read -- Jacqueline Roy, author of 'The Fat Lady Sings' This book is life-changing. I want to press it into so many hands -- Noreen Masud, author of 'A Flat Place' Moving, thoughtful, redemptive. The Strangers is an important book. It will become a Black classic. -- Ben Okri, author of 'The Famished Road' Elegant, evocative, moving - I think it's brilliant. I've never read a book like it and I'm wiser for reading it -- Philippa Perry The architecture of this book is extraordinary, the execution exceptional. A work of literary portraiture which is meticulously researched, beautifully expressed and above all moving and evocative. I was educated and enriched to the very last page -- Charlotte Williams, author of 'Sugar and Slate' Unputdownable and fiercely tender - through these five men, five masks, five mirrors, we meet ourselves. This act of docu-poetry should be required reading for all -- Es Devlin, award-winning artist and stage designer