The Message

The renowned author returns with a timely book about his journeys to three sites of conflict - Dakar, South Carolina, and Palestine - exploring how the stories we tell, and the ones we don't, shape our realities.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to be a book about writing, but soon found itself grappling with deeper questions about the destructive myths that shape our world.

First, we join Coates on his inaugural trip to Africa - a journey to Dakar, where he finds himself in two places at once—a modern city in Senegal and the ghost-haunted country of his imagination.

He then takes readers to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on the banning of his own work and the deep roots of a false and fiercely protected American mythology—visibly on display in its segregationist statues.

Finally, in Palestine, Coates sees with devastating clarity the tragedy that grows in the clash between the stories we tell and reality on the ground.

Written at a dramatic moment in American and global history, this work from one of our most important writers is about the urgent need to embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.