Strangers

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

Beautiful, powerful and haunting, this book defies erasure with imagination and integrity, Ekow Eshun is a genius. He holds a torch where institutions have refused to look and helps us all to see through shadows to the magnificent strangers. His writings on the Black aesthetic are unsurpassed – and my world is a better place because he is writing in it. This book will be referenced for years to come, Moving, thoughtful, redemptive. The Strangers is an important book. It will become a Black classic., Thrilling and ingenious, propulsive and genre-defying: The Strangers is an outstanding book. Ekow Eshun resurrects five pioneering figures, connecting them thematically to each other while constantly recalibrating the contexts around them, revealing wider global histories, cultures and patterns of power. Compelling and imaginatively expansive, this is something very special – creative non-fiction that inspires, stirs and challenges the reader, This book is life-changing. I want to press it into so many hands, Beautiful, powerful and haunting, this book defies erasure with imagination and integrity, Ekow Eshun is a genius. He holds a torch where institutions have refused to look and helps us all to see through shadows to the magnificent strangers. His writings on the Black aesthetic are unsurpassed – and my world is a better place because he is writing in it. This book will be referenced for years to come, Moving, thoughtful, redemptive. The Strangers is an important book. It will become a Black classic., Thrilling and ingenious, propulsive and genre-defying: The Strangers is an outstanding book. Ekow Eshun resurrects five pioneering figures, connecting them thematically to each other while constantly recalibrating the contexts around them, revealing wider global histories, cultures and patterns of power. Compelling and imaginatively expansive, this is something very special – creative non-fiction that inspires, stirs and challenges the reader, This book is life-changing. I want to press it into so many hands

Ekow Eshun is a British-Ghanaian writer, editor, curator, broadcaster, and author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize for its exploration of race and identity. He writes for publications including the New York Times, Financial Times and Guardian, and has created documentaries for BBC4 and BBC Radio 4. Eshun was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and the first Black director of a major arts organisation. He has curated exhibitions internationally, including 2023's critically acclaimed, landmark project In the Black Fantastic at the Hayward Gallery and the British Film Institute, and The Time is Always Now, a major study of contemporary Black portraiture, at London's National Portrait Gallery (2024). He is currently Chairman of the Fourth Plinth committee, overseeing London's most significant public art programme, and Creative Director of the Calvert 22 Foundation.