The Water Dancer: A Novel

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Sep 2019 · Sold by One World

About this ebook

#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

Ratings and reviews

I listened to the audio book and absolutely loved it. I'd been wanting to read something by Ta-Nehisi Coates, and his work lived up to my hopes! Excellent story, strong characters, and meaningful relationships. Beautifully written.

The writer beautifuly and realisticly recreated scenes of a slavery farming township slaves singing hymes working in peace ...other days it became violent and heart wrenching...the images came alive with raw intricate detail. The plot unfolded like the delicate petals of a lotus flower. The writer peeled back the layers of loyalty, terror, joy, death,family to reveal decades long struggles of a slave wanting to flee his master. yet feeling a sense of betrayal because his slave master is his biological father. This book is amazing. I feel blessed ,to know that my ancestors had the courage to operate a successfull plans like this for freedom with other blacks and whites. I want to thank my ancestors for their conviction,..... Thier belive in our people......Thier wisdom and unwaivering heart that allowed them to walk without fear into their future.... Thus allowing my family and many ,many, others the opportunity and the previlige to do the same . Thank you Angie Reed

This book haunted me from its very first pages. It's the kind of read that can't be set aside for a later time. And so, having just finished it at 4:27 a.m., I find myself wondering where fiction and reality intersect, whether or not Hiram was based on a real person, and if it might be possible to 'conduct' ourselves away from our afflictions. These questions won't mean anything to you until you read this; but please, buy this book. You will have missed a literary feast for the senses if you don't.

About the author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is the author of The Beautiful Struggle, We Were Eight Years in Power, The Water Dancer, and Between the World and Me, which won the National Book Award in 2015. He is the recipient of a National Magazine Award and a MacArthur Fellowship. He is currently the Sterling Brown endowed chair at Howard University in the English department.