The Strangers

Five Extraordinary Black Men and the Worlds That Made Them

By: Ekow Eshun

Narrated by: Ekow Eshun, Ako Mitchell

Brought to you by Penguin.

Richly imaginative and powerfully empathetic, an intimate portrait of five remarkable Black men, and a meditation on race, estrangement and the search for home

In the western imagination, a Black man is always a stranger. Outsider, foreigner, intruder, alien. One who remains associated with their origins irrespective of how far they have travelled from them. One who is not an individual in their own right but the representative of a type.

What kind of performance is required for a person to survive this condition? And what happens beneath the mask?

In answer, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five very different men. Ira Aldridge: nineteenth century actor and playwright. Matthew Henson: polar explorer. Frantz Fanon: psychiatrist and political philosopher. Malcolm X: activist leader. Justin Fashanu: million-pound footballer. Each a trailblazer in his field. Each haunted by a sense of isolation and exile. Each reaching for a better future.

Ekow Eshun tells their stories with breathtaking lyricism and empathy, capturing both the hostility and the beauty they experienced in the world. And he locates them within a wider landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics which stretches from Africa to Europe to North America and the Caribbean. As he moves through this landscape, he maps its thematic contours and fault lines, uncovering traces of the monstrous and the fantastic, of exile and escape, of conflict and vulnerability, and of the totemic central figure of the stranger.

'Thrilling and ingenious, propulsive and genre-defying: The Strangers is an outstanding book' Bernardine Evaristo

'Luminous and extraordinary... This book will be referenced for years to come' Lemn Sissay

©2024 Ekow Eshun (P)2024 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

'This book is astounding. Told with a rigour and intimacy that only Ekow Eshun could conjure… In a world where Blackness is synonymous with death, The Strangers portrays scenes of beauty, of fullness – of just what it means to be alive' (Caleb Azumah Nelson, author of 'Open Water')

'Beautiful, powerful and haunting, this book defies erasure with imagination and integrity' (Afua Hirsch, author of 'Brit(ish)')

'The Strangers is diamantine – multifaceted, sharp and exceptionally bright. I was captivated by its vivid depiction of these five Black lives' (Doireann Ní Ghríofa)