What To Read

Writer and poet Rob Franklin’s highly anticipated debut novel, is set to be the summer’s literary sensation. With a chorus of hall-of-fame blurbs already in place, Great Black Hope follows a young Black man from an elite family who finds himself drawn into New York’s underworld. Arrested for cocaine possession, he’s forced to confront the complex interplay of privilege, identity, and race, all while grappling with the unresolved mystery of a close friend’s death. A fast-paced, can't-put-it-down mix of mystery and coming-of-age, this debut introduces an electrifying new voice in fiction.

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Early praise for Great Black Hope

"Incandescent...full of sentences I want to cut out and glue to my forehead." —Kaveh Akbar, New York Times bestselling author of Martyr!

“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

"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 masterpiece...At once fresh and original while delighting the reader with hints of Franzen, McInerny, Baldwin. This novel--a whodunit, a coming-of-age, a New York novel--heralds the arrival of a rarefied talent." —Elin Hilderbrand, bestselling author of Swan Song

"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)

"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 book releases on June 10 and is available for preorder on Tertulia. Read on for an excerpt from the book.

Prologue

In the grand scheme of history, it was nothing. A blip, a breath. The time it took Smith to pocket what might have looked like a matchbook or stick of gum to an unwitting child but was, in fact, 0.7 grams of powdered Colombian cocaine—flown in from Medellín, cut with amphetamine in Miami, and offered to him in Southampton by a boy whom he knew from nights out in the city; 0.7 grams heavier, he loped back through the crush of rhythmless elbows and cloying perfume which wafted up and dissolved in the damp and sultry night—the very last of summer.

Looking around, he realized it was really just a restaurant. By the front door, at least fifty people huddled, breathing down each other’s necks as they shouted names they hoped would capture the doorman’s attention, while in the backyard were hundreds more. Dozens of tables now shook with the weight of dancing, bodies lit with the particular mania reserved for the end of East Coast summers, when one becomes aware of the changing season, the coming cold. But for now, it was silk and linen, the expensive musk of strangers. Every face appeared familiar— some because he actually knew them while others only bore a suntanned resemblance, the pleasing symmetry of the rich.

Copyright © 2025 by Robert M. Franklin III. From the forthcoming book GREAT BLACK HOPE by Rob Franklin to be published by Summit Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, LLC. Printed by permission.

Like what you've read? Check out Great Black Hope by Rob Franklin