Libertie

(Paperback, Main)

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF 2021 * LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 PEN AMERICA OPEN BOOK AWARD

A Times Book of the Month

One of Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Picks

'A feat of monumental thematic imagination' - The New York Times Book Review
'An elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay

Libertie Sampson was named by her father as he lay dying, in honour of the bright, shining future he was sure was coming. The only daughter of a prosperous Black woman physician, she was born free in a country still blighted by slavery. But she has never felt free. Shrinking from her mother's ambitions for her future, Libertie ventures beyond her insulated community, hoping that somehow, somewhere, she will create a life that feels like her own.

Immersive, lyrical and deeply moving, Libertie is a novel about legacy and longing, the story of a young woman struggling to discover what freedom truly means - for herself, and for generations to come.

Reviews

'Greenidge mixes elements of both conventional historical fiction and magical realism into a satisfying and emotionally powerful brew' - Sunday Times

'Kaitlyn Greenidge is good on the contradictions of freedom, and the persistent, sour legacy of slavery, but it is the mother-daughter relationship that makes this novel dazzle' - The Times

'A soaring exploration of what 'freedom' truly means. Libertie is an elegantly layered, beautifully rendered tour de force that is not to be missed' - Roxane Gay

'A feat of monumental thematic imagination ... Greenidge both mines history and transcends time' - Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

'Greenidge (We Love You, Charlie Freeman) delivers another genius work of radical historical fiction ... This piece de resistance is so immaculately orchestrated that each character, each setting, and each sentence sings.' - Publishers Weekly, starred and boxed review

Author Bio

Kaitlyn Greenidge's debut novel, We Love You, Charlie Freeman, was one of The New York Times Critics' Top 10 Books of 2016 and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. She is a contributing writer for The New York Times, and her writing has also appeared in Vogue, Glamour, Wall Street Journal and elsewhere. Kaitlyn is a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fiction. Libertie is her second novel.