The Furrows

<p><b>***ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2022***<br>***<i>NYT </i>BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR***<br>*** <i>GUARDIAN </i>BEST FICTION OF 2022***</b><br><br><i><b>I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt.</b></i><br><br>Cassandra Williams is twelve; her little brother Wayne is seven. One day when they're alone together there's an accident and Wayne is lost forever. Though his body is never recovered their mother can't stop searching. The missing boy cleaves the family with doubt: how do you grieve an absence? And how does it feel?<br><br>As C grows older she relives and retells her story and she sees her brother everywhere: in cafes aeroplane aisles subway cars. Here is her brother's older face the light in his eyes his lanky limbs the way he seems to recognise her too. But it can't be of course. Or can it? And then one day there's another accident and C meets a man both mysterious and familiar a man who's also searching for someone as well as his own place in the world. His name is Wayne.<br><br>Namwali Serpell's piercing new novel captures the ongoing and uncanny experience of grief as the past breaks over the present like waves in the sea. <i>The Furrows</i> is a bold exploration of memory and mourning that twists unexpectedly into a masterful story of mistaken identity slippery reality black experience and the wishful and sometimes wilful longing for reunion with those we've lost.<br><br><b>'In Namwali Serpell's hands grief is a kind of possession. The Furrows is a piercing sharply written novel about the conjuring power of loss' - RAVEN LEILANI author of Luster</b></p>