Description

‘Remarkable, outstanding, exquisite … beautifully rendered in a kaleidoscope of images and sensations’ Jamaica Kincaid

Two friends meet in an art gallery after decades of silence. The idealism that once bound them together fissured and fractured under the weight of collective and personal griefs. Through their memories of youthful certainty, the antagonism of their conversation and the embers of their enduring kinship, they navigate the wreckage of our world today – the hope, the anger and the exhaustion.

In her most personal and emotionally resonant writing yet, Claudia Rankine blends narrative, memory and criticism in a poignant exploration of the beautiful but complicated friendships that we rely on to unsettle us, to make us better – exposing the fiction in the facts of our lives and demanding action in our time of relentless loss.

Publisher Review

Stunning… an extended meditation on the collective devastation of the present. The beauty of Rankine’s dense, elliptical sentences guides us through — Saidiya Hartman A sharp, forensic inquiry into camaraderie and the way it frays under the pressures of contemporary life — Roger Robinson, author of A Portable Paradise At the center of Triage is a ritual of collapse and tentative recovery, of giving way and getting back up. In Claudia Rankine’s writing, we feel traditional genres buckle under the catastrophes of the present-and then she shows us how new possibilities of form and feeling might emerge — Ben Lerner Claudia Rankine’s remarkable, outstanding odyssey-an account of our present, which is also our past, which is always our future-is beautifully rendered in a kaleidoscope of images and sensations. Triage is exquisite — Jamaica Kincaid Claudia Rankine’s lines profoundly question the validity and viability of ‘these truths,’ whether spoken in faith or twisted out of shape. Rankine’s body poetic refuses the compromises and consolations of the body politic. Triage is her elegiac anti-memoir of ‘these times’ — Homi K. Bhabha A masterwork, faultless and taut, that stitches together a fractured, aching world with precise and subtle language that refuses to ever falter under the weight of the profundity of Claudia Rankine’s conclusions. Her genius takes on the deepest questions of our spirits — Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, Pulitzer-Prize winner for Feature Writing 2018 Rankine is a literary icon, so it’s no surprise that she’s found ways to blend genres and formats into her next book. . . . Rankine explores the backdrop of violence that has only intensified in recent years, as well as the love that keeps us together in emotionally numbing times * Harper’s Bazaar 25 Most Highly Anticipated Books of 2026 * Rankine’s latest book challenges not only genre boundaries but also those that keep us from understanding and reckoning with the pain we feel, and that we may cause — Kate Tuttle * Boston Globe Best Books of the Summer 2026 * The groundbreaking poet and essayist best known for her much acclaimed book Citizen returns with a blend of narrative, memoir and criticism… Expect poignancy and political resonance in this treatise on friendship — Ellen Peirson-Hagger * Observer ten books to pack for your holidays *