"Riveting, disturbing, and rendered in masterful detail.”
—Leigh Bardugo
In the 2050s, Earth has begun to empty. Those with the means and the privilege have left the great cities of the United States for the more comfortable confines of space colonies. Those left behind salvage what they can from the collapsing infrastructure. Their neighborhoods are being cannibalized, brick by brick, with materials being sent up to the colonies as a quaint reminder of the world that they wrecked.
A primal biblical epic flung into the future, Goliath weaves together disparate narratives—a space-dweller looking at New Haven as a chance to reconnect with his spiraling lover; a group of civil servants attempting to renew the promises of Earth’s crumbling cities; a journalist attempting to capture the violence of the streets; a marshal questioning what form justice could even take—into a richly urgent mosaic about race, class, gentrification, and who is allowed to be the hero of any history.
About the Author
Tochi Onyebuchi is the author of the young adult novel Beasts Made of Night, which won the Ilube Nommo Award for Best Speculative Fiction Novel by an African, its sequel, Crown of Thunder, and War Girls. His novella Riot Baby, a finalist for the Hugo, the Nebula, the Locus, the Ignyte, and the NAACP Image Awards, won the New England Book Award for Fiction and an ALA Alex Award. He holds a B.A. from Yale, a M.F.A. in screenwriting from the Tisch School for the Arts, a Master's degree in droit économique from Sciences Po, and a J.D. from Columbia Law School. His fiction has appeared in Panverse Three, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Obsidian, Omenana Magazine, Uncanny, and Lightspeed. His non-fiction has appeared in Tor.com, Nowhere Magazine, the Oxford University Press blog, and the Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, among other places.
Industry Reviews
"Onyebuchi sets fire to the boundary between fiction and reality, and brings a crumbling city and an all too plausible future to vibrant life. Riveting, disturbing, and rendered in masterful detail."
Leigh Bardugo
Praise for Riot Baby An Alex Award Winner Winner of the New England Book Award Hugo Award Finalist Nebula Award Finalist
"Onyebuchi's voice work is magnificent, sharp and whipping. . . . This book recognizes that intimate knowledge of suffering can be a source of strength, can be sustaining as well as depressing that we can grieve the inheritance of generations of ancestors' pain while marveling at their endurance, and recognize that resilience as part of their legacy."
The New York Times
"Riot Baby bursts at the seams of story with so much fire, passion and power that in the end it turns what we call a narrative into something different altogether."
Marlon James
"Onyebuchi has woven a story as uplifting as it is heartbreaking, an epic ode to the future and past, tiny acts of resistance, love, and the wild unstoppable sweep of revolution."
Daniel Jose Older
"Onyebuchi welds a graphic novel sensibility to a searing look at structural inequity in America today. This isn't Jack Womack or J.G. Ballard's broken near future: it's our own photorealistic broken present. Riot Baby is an important book."
Elizabeth Bear
"Stunningly original, brutal, and electric. Onyebuchi's prose scorches. It's hard to put this book down, and when you do, it stays with you."
R. F. Kuang
