Rob Franklin Writer, Professor, Co-founder of Art for Black Lives

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!

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, bestselling author of Entitlement

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 

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 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

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, New York Times bestselling author of Nightcrawling

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

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, New York Times bestselling author of A Burning

Smart, scintillating… Subjects that might make for solemn reading are rendered thoroughly absorbing by the author’s radiant prose and razor-sharp observations. A captivating novel of dissolution and redemption.”
– Kirkus (Starred Review)