Author(s): Robert Jones Jr.

Fiction

BOOKSELLERS' CHOICE EXCLUSIVE HB EDITION *** LIMITED RUN OF 1500 COPIES ONLY In this blinding debut, Robert Jones Jr. blends the lyricism of Toni Morrison with the vivid prose of Zora Neale Hurston to characterise the forceful, enduring bond of love, and what happens when brutality threatens the purest form of serenity. The Halifax plantation is known as Empty by the slaves who work it under the pitiless gaze of its overseers and its owner, Massa Paul. Two young enslaved men, Samuel and Isaiah dwell among the animals they keep in the barn, helping out in the fields when their day is done. But the barn is their haven, a space of radiance and love - away from the blistering sun and the cruelty of the toubabs - where they can be alone together. But, Amos - a fellow slave - has begun to direct suspicion towards the two men and their refusal to bend. Their flickering glances, unspoken words and wilful intention, revealing a truth that threatens to rock the stability of the plantation. And preaching the words of Massa Paul's gospel, he betrays them. The culminating pages of The Prophets summon a choral voice of those who have suffered in silence, with blistering humanity, as the day of reckoning arrives at the Halifax plantation. Love, in all its permutations, is the discovery at the heart of Robert Jones Jr's breathtaking debut, The Prophets.

CONSTANT READER REVIEW: RICHARD

Sprawling, tender and savage by turns, poetic, and deeply moving. Jones is a young, American author imagining the lost queer black voices of the antebellum. Essentially an (inevitably tragic) love story between Isaiah and Samuel, two young slave boys/men on a brutal Mississippi plantation. The Prophets is also much more than this.

Jones adopts the perspectives of many of the slaves and owners, also stretching back to a majestic vision of a matriarchal, pre-invasion African tribal society, first contact and the horrific slave ship voyage. Jones finds beautiful voices for his female characters as well as the young men, and explores the interplay between Africana and European spiritual beliefs: each chapter is names after a bible chapter and some of the language is reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy.

Big, beautiful, and an easy read despite its confronting content.