The Colossus of New York

In a dazzlingly original work of non-fiction, the award-winning novelist Colson Whitehead re-creates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise and the heartbreak of New York, composing a love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in - or spent time in - this great city. In this masterful evocation of the greatest of cities, Colson Whitehead conveys with almost uncanny immediacy the feelings and thoughts of longtime residents and of newcomers who dream of making it their home. His style, a series of vignettes, meditations and personal memories, is as multilayered and multifarious as New York itself. There is a funny, knowing riff on what it feels like to arrive there for the first time; a lyrical meditation on how the city is transformed by an unexpected rain shower; while another captures those magical moments when the city seems to be talking directly to you, inviting you to become one with its rhythms. Ambitious in scope, gemlike in its details, 'The Colossus of New York' is at once an unparalleled tribute to this great city and the ideal introduction to one of the most exciting writers in America today.