What We Lose

Author: Zinzi Clemmons

Stock information

General Fields

  • : $22.99 AUD
  • : 9780008245979
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Australia
  • : Fourth Estate
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  • : 0.215
  • : February 2018
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 19.99
  • : February 2018
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  • :
  • : books

Special Fields

  • :
  • :
  • : Zinzi Clemmons
  • :
  • : Paperback
  • :
  • : 224
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Barcode 9780008245979
9780008245979

Description

A National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Finalist
Aspen Words Literary Prize Finalist
California Book Award First Fiction Finalist
Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vogue, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Buzzfeed, San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, The Huffington Post, The A.V. Club, The Root, Harper's Bazaar, Paste, Bustle, Kirkus Reviews, Electric Literature, LitHub, New York Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Bust

"The debut novel of the year." --Vogue

"Like so many stories of the black diaspora, What We Lose is an examination of haunting. " --Doreen St. F lix, The New Yorker

"A richly volatile study of grief, wonderment and love." --Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

"A startling, poignant debut." --The Atlantic

"Raw and ravishing, this novel pulses with vulnerability and shimmering anger." --Nicole Dennis-Benn, O, the Oprah Magazine

"Stunning. . . . Powerfully moving and beautifully wrought, What We Lose reflects on family, love, loss, race, womanhood, and the places we feel home." --Buzzfeed

"Remember this name: Zinzi Clemmons. Long may she thrill us with exquisite works like What We Lose. . . . The book is a remarkable journey." --Essence

From an author of rare, haunting power, a stunning novel about a young African-American woman coming of age--a deeply felt meditation on race, sex, family, and country

Raised in Pennsylvania, Thandi views the world of her mother's childhood in Johannesburg as both impossibly distant and ever present. She is an outsider wherever she goes, caught between being black and white, American and not. She tries to connect these dislocated pieces of her life, and as her mother succumbs to cancer, Thandi searches for an anchor--someone, or something, to love.

In arresting and unsettling prose, we watch Thandi's life unfold, from losing her mother and learning to live without the person who has most profoundly shaped her existence, to her own encounters with romance and unexpected motherhood. Through exquisite and emotional vignettes, Clemmons creates a stunning portrayal of what it means to choose to live, after loss. An elegiac distillation, at once intellectual and visceral, of a young woman's understanding of absence and identity that spans continents and decades, What We Lose heralds the arrival of a virtuosic new voice in fiction.

One of the New York Times, Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Redbook, Marie Claire, Essence, Houston Chronicle, LA Daily News, Nylon, and Elle's Books to Read This Summer

Reviews

`The debut novel of the year ... visceral, cerebral, provocative, elegiac. One can't help but think of Clemmons as in the running to be the next-generation Claudia Rankine' Vogue `Luminescent' Independent `A lovely little headrush of a novel ... if you enjoyed Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing then try this' Sunday Times Style `Bracingly clear-eyed ... the tension between her steady prose and turbulent emotions is beautifully sustained' Daily Mail `Highly original. Zinzi Clemmons deftly explores grief, sex and identity' Elle `Concise and powerful. This original and challenging debut is a must-read for fans of literary fiction and memoir' Bookriot `Penetratingly good and written in vivid still life, What We Lose reads like a guided tour through a melancholic Van Gogh exhibit - wonderfully chromatic, transfixing and bursting with emotion. Zinzi Clemmons's debut novel signals the emergence of a voice that refuses to be ignored' Paul Beatty `What We Lose navigates the many registers of grief, love and injustice . . . acutely moving' Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland 'I loved this beautiful, honest and entrancing meditation on love, loss and the relationships that enrich and complicate our lives' Bernardine Evaristo

Author description

Zinzi Clemmons was raised in Philadelphia by a South African mother and an American father. Her writing has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, the Paris Review Daily, Transition and elsewhere. She is a cofounder and former publisher of Apogee Journal and a contributing editor to Literary Hub. Clemmons lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the Colburn Conservatory and Occidental College.