Linden Hills

INTRODUCED BY IRENOSEN OKOJIE

With its showcase homes and manicured lawns, an address in the wealthy Black American neighbourhood of Linden Hills is a symbol that you've made it. The ultimate achievement: a home on prestigious Tupelo Drive, at the base of the hills. But the further down you go, the more this paradise begins to look like a circle of hell . . .

As two young friends - poets from the wrong side of town - journey through the neighbourhood picking up odd jobs and extra cash, their warmth, humour and disbelief expose the hypocrisy of the lost souls of Linden Hills. Lyrical, wise and dazzlingly imaginative, Naylor's novel exposes the dark heart of the American dream.

'An ambitious novel that aspires to be nothing less than a contemporary reading of Dante's Inferno . . . Naylor fuse[s] together the epic and the naturalistic, the magical and the real' New York Times

Gloria Naylor is gifted with timeless wisdom, bottomless empathy, and limitless language' TAYARI JONES

'Naylor's skill in weaving together culture, heartbreak, joy, magic, terror, laughter, pain, and love - which is to say, life - is extraordinary' Robert Jones, Jr.