‘A beautifully expansive novel about race and class... Franklin's emotional and intellectual range is vast... An exceptional debut’ – Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies
‘So smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again’ – Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!
‘The precision and ecstasy of Rob Franklin's prose had me entranced. Great Black Hope marks the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer’ – Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning
‘A new voice in fiction to be reckoned with’ Harper’s Bazaar ‘Best Books of 2025’
‘A book about New York that’s part love letter, part reckoning’ – Guardian
‘Gripping’ – Daily Mail
An arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black queer graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him but his race does not. It is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she died.
When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. Then Carolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost him his freedom and his future?
Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.
