Description

‘A classic to rank with Orwell . . . I didn’t want it to end’ CHRISTINA PATTERSON, SUNDAY TIMES

Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction
A Barack Obama Favourite Book of the Year
Winner of the 2022 Anthony Lukas Book Prize
Winner of the 2022 Gotham Book Prize
Winner of the 2022 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism
A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021
A Time Top Three Books of the Year
An Atlantic Top Five Books of the Year
Finalist in the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

‘This is non-fiction writing at its best – uncluttered, evocative and well-researched’ GARY YOUNGE, NEW STATESMEN

‘An intimate exploration of poverty and racism in the U.S., as well as a portrait of a young person’s resilience’ TIME

‘One of the most moving and extraordinary pieces of reportage I’ve ever read’ BEE WILSON

‘Andrea Elliott’s reporting has an intimate, almost limitless feel to it… The result of this unflinching, tenacious reporting is a rare and powerful work whose stories will live inside you long after you’ve read them.’ NEW YORK TIMES
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Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.

Dasani comes of age as New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.

‘Simply put, this is a masterpiece’ THOMAS HARDING

‘A tender portrait of a family, and a tour of America’s broken welfare systems and racist policies.’ THE ATLANTIC

Publisher Review

A triumph of in-depth reporting and storytelling ... a visceral blow-by-blow depiction of what 'structural racism' has meant in the lives of generations of one family ... above all else it is a celebration of a little girl-an unforgettable heroine whose frustration, elation, exhaustion, and intelligence will haunt your heart. -- Ariel Levy Invisible Child is hands down the best book I have read in years. Astonishing, remarkable, shocking, powerful, gripping, compelling. All of these words apply and more. This is a book of immense importance, written with tremendous craft and skill, but also compassion and verve . . . For those who have not read Invisible Child I am jealous, you are in for an extraordinary ride. Simply put, this is a masterpiece. * Thomas Harding, bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake * A towering feat of reporting that paints, layer by layer, an extraordinary portrait of a child, a family, a city, and the nation that produced them. From start to finish, she sustains an insatiably curious and deeply empathetic focus on worlds that so many people work hard, if mostly unconsciously, to never really see. * Howard W. French, author of Born in Blackness * A wonderful and important book. * Tracy Kidder * "From its first indelible pages to its rich and startling conclusion, Invisible Child had me, by turns, stricken, inspired, outraged, illuminated, in tears, and hungering for reimmersion in its Dickensian depths. This book is so many things: a staggering feat of reporting, an act of profound civic love, an extraordinarily moving tale about the fierceness of family love, and above all, a future American classic." * Ayad Akhtar, author of Homeland Elegies *