'A beautifully expansive novel about race and class…Franklin’s emotional and intellectual range is vast…. An exceptional debut.'

– Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies

'It’s thrilling to see any author today aiming for the big stuff all at once: death, race, sex, class, addiction. It’s beyond thrilling—incandescent, even—when a writer like Rob Franklin comes along with the formal virtuosity to carry those lofty conceptual ambitions. Franklin’s prose is eminently readable, frequently laugh-out-loud funny, and full of sentences I want to cut out and glue to my forehead. This book is so smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again.'

– Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

'The precision and ecstasy of Rob Franklin's prose had me entranced. Great Black Hope marks the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer.'

– Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning

'What a marvel to discover a voice so authentic, urgent, and undeniable. GREAT BLACK HOPE is a rare thing: a coming-of-age novel that examines the individual as well as the complex systems that shape his life. An intensely intimate yet expansive work of art.'

– Tania James, author of Loot

'Rob Franklin’s prose is rich, mesmerizing, and utterly gorgeous. Through each remarkable sentence, Franklin takes you through a meditation on one Black queer man's struggle with the confinement of his choices under the magnifying glass of wealthy America.'

– Leila Mottley, author of Nightcrawling

'Great Black Hope indeed! Rob Franklin’s brilliant storytelling explores and explodes every fact and fiction of those charged words; likewise, the intricacies and treacheries of privilege. Those categories we parse so confidently — class, race, gender sexuality — are shaped into nuanced individual stories. His prose is elegant and searching, his pace flawless from start to finish.'

– Margo Jefferson, author of Negroland

'The music of Rob Franklin’s writing is so seductive, you won’t even notice the shiv until it’s too late.'

– Saeed Jones, author of Alive at the End of the World

'Great Black Hope is at once a novel of crime—with a gripping pace, propelled by a question that needs answering—and a timeless coming of age story.'

– Rumaan Alam, author of Entitlement

'Rob Franklin’s debut novel, Great Black Hope, is a masterpiece– at once fresh and original while delighting the reader with hints of Franzen, McInerney, Baldwin. The specificity of the language is like fine lacework, a beauty to behold. This novel – a whodunit, a coming-of-age, a New York novel – heralds the arrival of a rarefied talent. Wow wow wow.'

– Elin Hilderbrand, author of Swan Song

 

'If Tom Wolfe, Jay McInerney, and Margo Jefferson somehow collaborated, this might have been the delightful result.'

– Boris Kachka, Atlantic