The Wilderness

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
"Flournoy has delivered a future classic-the kind of novel that generations to come will read to understand the nuances and peculiarities of this time." - Harper's Bazaar
An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife-in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood-overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences-swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January's got a relationship with a "good" man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000's into the late 2020's, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another-amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy's masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.

Über den Autor / die Autorin

Angela Flournoy is the author of The Turner House, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, an Indie Next pick, and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, and she has written for The New York Times, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Flournoy has taught at the University of Iowa, Princeton University, and UCLA. She lives in New York.

Zusammenfassung

NATIONAL BESTSELLER
FINALIST FOR THE 2025 KIRKUS PRIZE FOR FICTION
LONGLISTED FOR 2025 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION
"Flournoy has delivered a future classic—the kind of novel that generations to come will read to understand the nuances and peculiarities of this time." — Harper's Bazaar
An era-defining novel about five Black women over the course of their twenty-year friendship, as they move through the dizzying and sometimes precarious period between young adulthood and midlife—in the much-anticipated second book from National Book Award finalist Angela Flournoy.
Desiree, Danielle, January, Monique, and Nakia are in their early twenties and at the beginning. Of their careers, of marriage, of motherhood, and of big-city lives in New York and Los Angeles. Together, they are finding their way through the wilderness, that period of life when the reality of contemporary adulthood—overwhelming, mysterious, and full of freedom and consequences—swoops in and stays.
Desiree and Danielle, sisters whose shared history has done little to prevent their estrangement, nurse bitter family wounds in different ways. January’s got a relationship with a “good” man she feels ambivalent about, even after her surprise pregnancy. Monique, a librarian and aspiring blogger, finds unexpected online fame after calling out the university where she works for its plans to whitewash fraught history. And Nakia is trying to get her restaurant off the ground, without relying on the largesse of her upper middle-class family who wonder aloud if she should be doing something better with her life.
As these friends move from the late 2000’s into the late 2020’s, from young adults to grown women, they must figure out what they mean to one another—amid political upheaval, economic and environmental instability, and the increasing volatility of modern American life.
The Wilderness is Angela Flournoy’s masterful and kaleidoscopic follow-up to her critically acclaimed debut The Turner House. A generational talent, she captures with disarming wit and electric language how the most profound connections over a lifetime can lie in the tangled, uncertain thicket of friendship.

Bericht

"The Wilderness is a wonderfully ambitious novel that follows five women throughout decades of friendship, as they struggle to find purpose and belonging in their rapidly-gentrifying cities. Weaving through time, Angela Flournoy explores the complexity of friendship, family, and home in a voice that is expansive yet intimate, humorous yet devastating. I loved this book." - Brit Bennett, author of The Vanishing Half and The Mothers
"The Wilderness arrives like a miracle. Here is the novel I'm always waiting for, one which captures and explains and deepens the world around me. These women, these friends - in their grief and loss, their dedication and their communion - are so achingly real it's hard to let them go. A book of ideas, gorgeously written with clear-sighted vision by one of the wisest, most talented authors working today. Angela Flournoy's The Wilderness is a book to get lost in." - Justin Torres, author of Blackouts, winner of the National Book Award
"All the best novels about friendship are invitations to count yourself among them, and The Wilderness is no exception; the joys and the sorrows of this book are multiplied because they are shared. Flournoy has a long-lens talent, capable of spanning great distances while keeping her characters in crisp, but always compassionate, focus, as they face the changing pressures and realities of growing up. The result is both portrait and panorama of contemporary American life." - Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries and Birnam Wood
"Sometimes a book comes along that doesn't just capture the zeitgeist-the exact feeling of being a particular kind of person in a particular period of time-but spins it. The Wilderness takes twenty-first-century black womanhood on a wild ride, and just keeps getting wilder. A triumphant whirlwind of a novel." - Namwali Serpell, author of The Furrows
"Angela Flournoy is singular in how she renders the complicated solidarity that exists between friends. In The Wilderness, there is deep tenderness, room for the grayer areas of experience, for contradiction, ambivalence and the right to be lost." - Raven Leilani, author of Luster
"We follow these vividly drawn women through the recent past and near future, exploring their friendship dynamics as they journey through life's significant changes and cope with heartbreaking loss. Flournoy is an immersive writer, describing the interiority of her characters and where their lives take place with striking detail and insight.... An absorbing, uplifting, and poignant story of community and deep connection." - Booklist (starred review)
"Flournoy has delivered a future classic-the kind of novel that generations to come will read to understand the nuances and peculiarities of this time." - Harper's Bazaar
"Bursting with charm, humor, wise insights and complex relationships, Angela Flournoy's new novel, The Wilderness, dazzles.... A powerful saga about how some of life's most profound and heart-mending relationships are friendships. - Women's World
"Angela Flournoy's vivid second novel, The Wilderness, treats friendship with the dignity and fascination it deserves." - Washington Post
"A beautifully-written novel." - The Root
"[An] expansive and intimate novel.... This is not your generic book club selection, celebrating four friends living, laughing, loving. But if you want a ruminating, clear-eyed look at friendship as a means of survival, this is it.... Flournoy marches away from judgment or other people's dreams in this galvanizing and sustaining portrait of friendship." - Boston Globe
"This novel is a triumph." - Los Angeles Times

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Angela Flournoy
• Verlag: Mariner Books
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Fester Einband
• Erschienen: 01.09.2025
• EAN: 9780063318779
• ISBN: 978-0-06-331877-9
• Seiten: 290
• Abmessung: 160 mm x 239 mm x 22 mm
• Themen: Belletristik > Erzählende Literatur; FICTION: Literary, LITERATURE: WOMEN'S LITERATURE, FICTION: African American & Black / Women, FICTION: Sagas, LITERATURE: GENERAL FICTION, FICTION: Psychological, AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES: LITERATURE, LITERATURE: AFRICAN AMERICAN, FICTION: Friendship, AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES: WOMEN'S STUDIES, LITERATURE: FAMILY, Literature / General Fiction, Literature / Women's Literature, Literature / African American, Literature / Family, African American Studies / Women's Studies