‘Beautiful, powerful and haunting, this book defies erasure with imagination and integrity.’ Afua Hirsch

From Ghana to Greenland, Leeds to Los Angeles, the nineteenth century to the twenty-first, Ekow Eshun conjures the voices of five remarkable Black men: Ira Aldridge, Matthew Henson, Frantz Fanon, Malcolm X and Justin Fashanu. His inventive and engaging book The Strangers considers these pioneering men at pivotal points in their lives, locating them within the vibrant, restless, richly detailed landscape of Black art, culture, history and politics in which they lived, tracing the development of Blackness and masculinity.

Ekow is a British-Ghanaian writer, editor, curator, broadcaster, and author of the memoir Black Gold of the Sun, which was nominated for the Orwell Prize. He was the first Black editor of a major magazine in the UK and the first Black director of a major arts organisation. He curated the exhibitions The Time is Always Now (National Portrait Gallery), In the Black Fantastic (Hayward Gallery), Africa State of Mind (Museum of African Diaspora, San Francisco) and We Are History (Somerset House). He is currently Chairman of the Fourth Plinth committee and Creative Director of the Calvert 22 Foundation.