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The Rich People Have Gone Away
  • Published: 13 August 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787335325
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99

The Rich People Have Gone Away




An engrossing novel about ordinary New Yorkers brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart

An engrossing novel of ordinary New Yorkers brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart

***A ROXANE GAY BOOK CLUB 2024 SELECTION***

'A lush study... Keen on the particulars of vast human catastrophes’ RAVEN LEILANI

Brooklyn, 2020. Theo Harper and his blonde, blue-eyed, pregnant wife Darla head upstate to their summer cottage to wait out the lockdown. Not everyone in their fancy apartment building has this privilege: not Xavier, the restless teenager in the Cardi B t-shirt, nor Darla’s black best friend Ruby and her partner Katsumi, who stay behind to save their restaurant.

During an upstate hike, Theo lets slip a long-held secret about his mixed-up ancestry – and when Darla disappears after the ensuing argument, he suddenly finds himself the prime suspect at the centre of a front-page police search for the perfect missing woman.

From the critically acclaimed author of The Travelers, The Rich People Have Gone Away is an engrossing novel about ordinary New Yorkers brought together in a story of betrayal, race, what connects us to each other – and what sets us apart.

'A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING, author of This Other Eden

  • Published: 13 August 2024
  • ISBN: 9781787335325
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $34.99

About the author

Regina Porter

Regina Porter is an award-winning playwright and author of The Travelers, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and longlisted for the Orwell Political Fiction Prize. A graduate of the MFA fiction program at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, her writing has been published in the Harvard Review, Tin House, and the Oxford Review.

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Praise for The Rich People Have Gone Away

I'm thrilled by the magnitude, ingenuity and heart of Regina Porter's daring vision

Irenosen Okojie, author Butterfly Fish

The Travellers is a rare debut that heralds what should be a long and promising career

Times Literary Supplement

Regina Porter has written another marvel of a novel. The Rich People Have Gone Away gives the reader a spiraling cross-section of richly drawn, impeccably observed New Yorkers... A kind of masterpiece of human portraiture that simultaneously renders quintessential depictions of the city, of America, and of the whole world in these first fraught decades of the 21st century

Paul Harding, author of This Other Eden

Wildly intelligent, brilliantly crafted, prismatic, living and breathing - a remarkable feat of sensation and humanity. Regina Porter is a marvel

Claire Lombardo, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had

Exquisitely drawn characters, scenes that jump off the page, and international locales that'll make you want to pack a bag and go, The Rich People Have Gone Away is a novel that fearlessly defies conventions to deliver a satiating, five-star experience. A keen observer of people and class, Regina Porter has crafted an inventive, hilarious, and wholly unpredictable work full of vibrant prose and genuine tenderness. A seven-course meal that gets better and better

Mateo Askaripour, author of Black Buck

A lush study of relationships, keen on the particulars of vast human catastrophes

Raven Leilani, author of Luster

A glorious jambalaya of word, thought and feeling, Regina Porter's prose positively howls from the page. Just when you thought you didn't need another novel set in New York, you suddenly, desperately do

Gary Shteyngart, author of Our Country Friends