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Sky Full of Elephants

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Sky Full of Elephants

By: Cebo Campbell
Narrated by: Leon Nixon, Erin Ruth Walker, Janina Edwards
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About this listen

 In this “bold and imaginative” (Tananarive Due) “truly powerful and riveting story” (Booklist) set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.

In a world without white people, what does it mean to be Black?

One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charlie Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served his time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old left behind by her white mother and step-family.

Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search for answers. But neither of them are prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.

Heading south toward what is now called the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, “this stunning allegory will spark much discussion” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours. African American Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Magical Realism Post-Apocalyptic Science Fiction Emotionally Gripping Witty Heartfelt
All stars
Most relevant
Deeply rousing. Still thinking about all the provocations in this book. Believe the hype and read it.

Love, love, love!!!

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Found this a powerful, beautifully written and thought-provoking listen. Inspiring about what could be. It gave me a real sense of Black Joy and the premise of the power of the ancestors completely resonated.

Powerful

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Thought provoking. Easy to misunderstand the book but it has much food for thought if you go deep.

Confronting

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Wow wow wow! Thanks Cebo for exploring and being so creative in a subject that’s so close to my heart. Still living under a sky full of elephants! UK

Wow wow wow!

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I’d been curious to read this story ever since I heard the premise and it didn’t disappoint. This is a powerful and moving tale about racial reckoning and personal reconciliation, exploring Black power, science, magic, nature, philosophy, trauma and healing, identity, love and loss. With such wide-ranging themes, it would be easy to get lost but the author anchors his narrative in the relationship between a father and his daughter. We see through their eyes all the conflicts and possibilities of Cebo’s imagined world, a utopian vision that is both haunting and liberating. Cebo Campbell writes like a dream and the voice actors brought his characters (and the music of his words) beautifully to life. Unforgettable.

Absorbing, thrilling, thought-provoking

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