SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD 2017ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2017 Jesmyn Ward is an important new voice of the American South - one developing, perhaps, into the twenty-first-century's answer to William Faulkner. Fiercely partisan yet unillusioned, she displays an impressive understand of politics and idiom. But perhaps most striking is her sustained and clear-eyed attention to people who, when noticed at all, are more usually consigned to a novel's periphery. Here they take centre stage and are depicted with the kind of piercing clarity born of love