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Great Expectations

By: Vinson Cunningham
Narrated by: Aaron Goodson
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Summary

'A phenomenal, transfixing work; Cunningham is a singular, dazzling writer' Bryan Washington
'A coming-of-age novel of the richest, most expansive kind, it's a rare debut, one that feels both intimate and revelatory' Megan Abbott
'Rarer is a debut that announces a talent like Cunningham's' New York Times


A historic presidential campaign changes the trajectory of a young Black man's life in the highly anticipated debut novel from one of The New Yorker's rising stars.

I'd seen the Senator speak a few times before my life got caught up, however distantly, with his, but the first time I can remember paying real attention was when he delivered the speech announcing his run for the Presidency.

When David first hears the Senator from Illinois speak, he feels deep ambivalence. Intrigued by the Senator's idealistic rhetoric, David also wonders how he'll balance the fervent belief and inevitable compromises it will take to become the United States's first Black president.

Great Expectations is about David's eighteen months working for the Senator's presidential campaign. Along the way David meets a myriad of people who raise a set of questions-questions of history, art, race, religion, and fatherhood that force David to look at his own life anew and come to terms with his identity as a young Black man and father in America.

Meditating on politics and politicians, religion and preachers, fathers and family, Great Expectations is both an emotionally resonant coming-of-age story and a rich novel of ideas, marking the arrival of a major new writer.
©2024 Vinson Cunningham (P)2024 Quercus Editions Limited
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Critic reviews

'The aptly-titled Great Expectations announces Vinson Cunningham as a novelist of singular style, wit and ambition. Focused on one young man's experience working on a historic presidential campaign, the novel is both a coming-of-age story for its narrator and-just as powerfully-a coming-of-age tale for the nation writ large. Cunningham has an uncanny ability to access the thoughts undergirding our thoughts, and his narrator is one that readers will wish they could keep by their sides to make sense of the world after the book's final pages. Read Great Expectations and see our recent past, our present, and even our future anew' (Angela Flournoy, author of The Turner House, finalist for the National Book Award)

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Excellent writing

A literary political novel that is about much more than politics. Lovely writing, restrained in all the right places.

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