is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations-and then proceeds to exceed them. “Ta-Nehisi Coates is the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race with his 2015 memoir, Between the World and Me. Written by one of today’s most exciting thinkers and writers, The Water Dancer is a propulsive, transcendent work that restores the humanity of those from whom everything was stolen. This is the dramatic story of an atrocity inflicted on generations of women, men, and children-the violent and capricious separation of families-and the war they waged to simply make lives with the people they loved. Even as he’s enlisted in the underground war between slavers and the enslaved, Hiram’s resolve to rescue the family he left behind endures. So begins an unexpected journey that takes Hiram from the corrupt grandeur of Virginia’s proud plantations to desperate guerrilla cells in the wilderness, from the coffin of the Deep South to dangerously idealistic movements in the North. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her-but was gifted with a mysterious power. Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time.NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE.Adapted by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamilah Forbes, directed by Nia DaCosta, and produced by MGM, Plan B, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films.IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE “This potent book about America’s most disgraceful sin establishes as a first-rate novelist.”- San Francisco Chronicle From the National Book Award–winning author of Between the World and Me, a boldly conjured debut novel about a magical gift, a devastating loss, and an underground war for freedom.

The water dancer a novel