Esi Edugyan Libri

Esi Edugyan interlaces fact and fiction, storytelling and dreaming to capture the essence of belonging.

The first ever essay collection from two-time Booker Shortlistee and Chair of the 2023 Booker Prize - now in paperback

"Washington Black, an eleven-year-old slave, is chosen to be the manservant of Christopher Wilde who takes him on adventures around the globe."

The aftermath of the fall of Paris, 1940. Hieronymous Falk, a rising star on the cabaret scene, was arrested in a cafe and never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. Fifty years later, Sid, Hiero's bandmate and the only witness that day, is going back to Berlin.

In this riveting narrative of family and middle-age angst, Esi Edugyan gives us Aster, an all-white suburban enclave. Far removed from the frenzied ways of city life, this small town at first seems an idyllic place to hide away, a place for a man like Samuel Tyne—an African immigrant caught in an impassive marriage, nursing a tenuous connection to his twin daughters, and harboring a growing hatred for his government job—to escape to. When his uncle Jacob suddenly dies, leaving him a rural estate, Samuel promptly packs up his reluctant family, and moves them to his uncle's crumbling mansion. But Samuel soon discovers that Aster is not the haven he had wished for. In fact, there's a strangeness to the town only to be outdone by the strangeness of his own daughters, who are particularly affected by the town's odd goings-on, including a number of mysterious fires. In short order, the new life Samuel Tyne envisioned for himself begins to disintegrate as a dark current of menace is turned upon his family. Already a book-club favorite, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne is a foreboding and mesmeric read from a welcome and dazzling new voice.