The Message

The Message braids three journeys - to Senegal, to a South Carolina school board fighting to ban his own work, and to the Israeli-occupied West Bank - into a meditation on writing, myth-making and the responsibilities of the writer. The final section, on Palestine, drew fierce debate, but the book's deeper subject is how narratives justify power and how honest witness might resist them.

Coates writes in the charged, direct prose that made Between the World and Me a landmark, addressing his students and, through them, the reader. intendle recommends it as a provocative, personal reckoning that rewards argument. A #1 bestseller and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, it is the work of a major writer thinking aloud about what writing is for.