Book Talk | This Great Hemisphere by Mateo Askaripour

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ABOUT THE BOOK

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Black Buck: A speculative novel about a young woman—invisible by birth and relegated to second class citizenship—who sets off on a mission to find her older brother, whom she had presumed dead but who is now the primary suspect in a high-profile political murder.

Despite the odds, Candace, a young invisible woman, has done everything right her entire life—school, university, and now a highly sought-after apprenticeship with one of the Northwestern Hemisphere's premier inventors, a non-invisible man belonging to the dominant population who is as eccentric as he is enigmatic. But the world she has fought so hard to build, after the disappearance of her older brother, comes crashing down when authorities claim that not only is he well and alive, he's also the main suspect in the murder of the Chief Executive of the Northwestern Hemisphere.  

The entire Northwestern Hemisphere is on the hunt for her brother, and Candace needs to find him before it’s too late. She sets off on a mission—dodging a relentless law officer who goes to great lengths to maintain order and an ambitious politician with sights set on becoming the next Chief Executive—revealing that those who the world deems powerless are anything but. 

With the blazing defiance of The Power and the ever-shifting machinations of House of Cards, This Great Hemisphere shows us how reality is often shaped by non-truths and vicious manipulations. In the Northwestern Hemisphere—a world dangerously like our own—no one and nothing is ever as it seems.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mateo Askaripour's work aims to empower people of color to seize opportunities for advancement, no matter the obstacle. He was chosen as one of Entertainment Weekly’s “10 rising stars to make waves in 2021,” a 2018 Rhode Island Writers Colony writer-in-residence, and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. His debut novel BLACK BUCK was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Read With Jenna Today Show book club pick.

IN CONVERSATION WITH 

Robert Jones, Jr. (formerly known on social media as “Son of Baldwin”) is a Brooklyn, New York-based writer and public speaker. He is the author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, which won the 2022 Publishing Triangle Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award for Fiction. His writings have been featured in The New York Times, Essence, Variety, and The Paris Review, as well as in the critically acclaimed anthologies Four Hundred Souls and The 1619 Project. The Prophets was named one of “The 25 Most Influential Works of Postwar Queer Literature” by The New York Times. Subscribe to Robert's newsletter, Witness, at robertjonesjr.substack.com.