*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*
'This
visionary and deeply evocative debut carves a radiant love story out of
the bleakest of landscapes.' Waterstones - Best Books to Look Out For
in 2021
'Rarely is a book this finely wrought, the lives
and histories it holds so tenderly felt, and rendered unforgettably
true' Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
'Robert Jones Jr's forthcoming debut The Prophets is magisterial and will change lives' Courttia Newland in The Guardian
In
this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni
Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the
forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality
threatens the purest form of serenity.
The Halifax
plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the
pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young
enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the
barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is
their haven, a space of radiance and love - away from the blistering
sun and the cruelty of the toubabs - where they can be alone together.
But,
Amos - a fellow slave - has begun to direct suspicion towards the two
men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words
and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the
stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's
gospel, he betrays them.
The culminating pages of The Prophets summon
a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering
humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation.
Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert
Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.
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