Great Black Hope
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- $229.00
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- $229.00
Descripción editorial
‘A beautifully expansive novel about race and class... Franklin's emotional and intellectual range is vast... An exceptional debut’ – Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
‘So smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again’ – Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
‘The precision and ecstasy of Rob Franklin's prose had me entranced. Great Black Hope marks the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer’ – Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
‘Great Black Hope will allow you to vicariously experience a sweltering summer in the city – though this debut is much more than a simple tale of hedonism’ - BBC Culture
‘Perfectly captures the heady atmosphere of a New York summer’ - Dazed
‘A new voice in fiction to be reckoned with’ Harper’s Bazaar ‘Best Books of 2025’
‘A book about New York that’s part love letter, part reckoning’ – Guardian
‘Gripping’ – Daily Mail
An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black queer graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him but his race does not. It is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she died.
When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. Then Carolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost him his freedom and his future?
Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Franklin's radiant debut, a queer Black man reckons with his class privilege and drug use in the aftermath of his best friend's mysterious death. David Smith, a 25-year-old tech worker and aspiring writer, is partying with old friends in the Hamptons when he's arrested for cocaine possession. After returning to his Brooklyn apartment, Smith is jolted by memories of his best friend and roommate's tragic death three weeks earlier. Elle England, the daughter of a famous soul singer, was found dead on the banks of the Bronx River, rumored to have taken fentanyl-laced cocaine. After Smith reluctantly tells his well-to-do Atlanta parents about his arrest, they hire a white Southampton lawyer, correctly presuming that the man's "local color" will work in Smith's favor. The plot is tightly woven and satisfying, culminating in Smith's visit to Atlanta, where he's hounded by a journalist looking for a scoop on Elle's death. What makes the novel really shine, however, is Franklin's deeply perceptive view into Smith's self-appraisal, which develops as he undergoes court-ordered drug treatment and joins a group of Black artists in homeless advocacy work, prompting him to reflect on the cost of going along with what his parents and friends want for him. Along the way, the author keenly portrays Smith's grief over Elle and how they fell into their hard-partying life. Readers will be rapt. Agents: Audrey Crooks and Ellen Levine, Trident Media Group.
