The Vanishing Half

THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP BESTSELLER
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE

'An utterly mesmerising novel..I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine
Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019

'Epic' Kiley Reid, O, The Oprah Magazine

'Favourite book [of the] year' Issa Rae

The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up
together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen,
it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's
everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten
years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern
town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her
white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many
miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What
will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines
intersect?

Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the
Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a
story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant
exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of
race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it
shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of
the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live
as something other than their origins.