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The Water Dancer: A Novel

Ta-Nehisi Coates

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • 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.

> “This potent book about America’s most disgraceful sin establishes \[Ta-Nehisi Coates\] as a first-rate novelist.”—San Francisco Chronicle.

IN DEVELOPMENT AS A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Adapted by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Kamilah Forbes, directed by Nia DaCosta, and produced by MGM, Plan B, and Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Films.

NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST NOVELS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Time • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • Vanity Fair • Esquire • Good Housekeeping • Paste • Town & Country • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • Library Journal

**Young Hiram Walker was born into bondage.** When his mother was sold away, Hiram was robbed of all memory of her—but was gifted with a mysterious power. Years later, when Hiram almost drowns in a river, that same power saves his life. This brush with death births an urgency in Hiram and a daring scheme: to escape from the only home he’s ever known.

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. 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.

**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.** 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.

**Praise for _The Water Dancer_.**

> “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_. So naturally his debut novel comes with slightly unrealistic expectations—and then proceeds to exceed them. _The Water Dancer_ . . . is a work of both staggering imagination and rich historical significance. . . . What’s most powerful is the way Coates enlists his notions of the fantastic, as well as his fluid prose, to probe a wound that never seems to heal. . . . Timeless and instantly canon-worthy.”—Rolling Stone

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Sant Reads' channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/SantReads

other places to find me
🤍 my website: https://www.jananiekvelu.com/
🤍 my series # EpicBookRecs on the Epic Reads Channel: https://bit.ly/2XziOfz

💌 for business/sponsorship inquiries please contact eric@smallscreenmarketing.com
💌 for all other inquiries please contact me at thisstoryaintover@gmail.com

faqs
🤍 how do you pronounce your name?
\- my name is Jananie—pronounced JEN-nah-nee (like a knee!)

🤍 what's your background/ethnicity/etc?
\- both my parents are Sri Lankan Tamil, and I was born and raised in Canada!

🤍 what is your job?
\- aside from youtube I also work in product marketing!

* * *

48 books
