Neighbors and Other Stories (Faber Editions) : ‘Breathtaking’ – Tayari Jones; ‘Brilliant’ – Damon Galgut

AS CELEBRATED ON BBC FRONT ROW’This breathtaking collection is a marvel.’ Tayari Jones’Astute, brilliantly observed, timeless:’ Jackie Kay’Her precocious and brilliant talent hasn’t aged at all.’ Damon Galgut’Exquisite … These stories are all gems.’ Mendez’You hold your breath, completely at her mercy.’ Lucy CaldwellAnd she was becoming frightened too, looking at all those white faces pressed against the windowpanes. One Black family comes under attack as their little boy prepares to start at an all-white school. Friends plan a protest sit-in at the Rose Crest Tea Room, only to be arrested. The first Black student – always the ‘Experiment’ – retreats into her closet at a newly integrated college. And when a social worker enters a secluded woodland cabin, she meets the fate of all visitors . . . Tragically killed aged twenty-two in 1966, Diane Oliver’s masterly stories resonate today with renewed urgency. Steeped in the nightmarish horror of life for the Black community in the Jim Crow-era American South, these chilling tales explore toxic racism and the human toll of activism for ‘the cause’ with heartbreaking empathy and wisdom. Depicting African American families whole and broken, daily injustices and life-threatening political struggle, Neighbors restores a lost star to the twentieth-century literary canon.