Ta-Nehisi Coates: The Water Dancer, 9780593133118, C format Paperback, International Edition, One World/Penguin Random House US

(German edition "Der Wassertänzer", Karl Blessing Verlag, March 2, 2020)

Ta-Nahesi Coates “The Water Dancer” is probably my favorite literary  book of the year, right alongside Ocean Voong’s “On earth we are briefly gorgeous”. Two very different books but both with such powerful prose that it is almost impossible to decide what to read next as they leave such a void.

In my view Ta-Nahesi Coates, who has written non-fiction before,  winning the National Book Award in 2015 with “Between the World and me”,  has written a debut novel that can stand alongside such masterpieces as “Beloved” by Tony Morrison, Maya Angelou’s work and Colson Whitehead “The Underground Railroad”. 

Reminding me also in parts of the magical realism of Latin American authors but with a very distinct voice of its own, “The Water Dancer” tells the story of Hiram Walker who was born into slavery by an African mother and the white owner of  a tobacco plantation in Virginia.  When his mother is sold, in his pain he loses all memory of her but she has passed on a powerful, mysterious gift to him which reveals itself for the first time when the carriage he and his white half-brother are riding in derails and falls into the river Goose. Only Hiram by magic survives and his real life journey begins. What follows is a dramatic story of atrocities inflicted to generations of slaves, where emotional and physical cruelty and disregard of human pain was considered normal by white people and the bravery and human cost of people working in The Underground  unimaginable.

Sometimes I put the book aside and let the power of the story  and the language do its work in my mind and heart before resuming the read.  I urge you to read this incredible book.