An epic tale of love and liberation set in seventeenth-century colonial Brazil and the first book in over 20 years from a major voice in American literature.

A 2022 PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST
LONGLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE

'A once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world' Yara Rodriguez Fowler, Guardian
'Astonishingly rich in character and incident, filled with magic and mystery' Sunday Times
'Intricate, mesmerizing and endlessly inventive and subversive' Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
'A story woven with extraordinary complexity, depth and skill', Robert Jones, Jr, author of The Prophets

AN EPIC TALE OF LOVE AND LIBERATION SET IN SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY COLONIAL BRAZIL

From plantation to plantation, Almeyda, a young slave girl, hears whispers, rumours of Palmares, a hidden settlement where fugitive slaves live free. But can this promised land exist? And what price is paid for 'freedom'?

In Palmares, Gayl Jones brings to life a world full of unforgettable characters, reimagining extraordinary historical events and combining them with mythology and magic. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter of a century. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, '[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.' Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.

Palmares reinvents 17th-century Black Brazil in all its multiplicity, beauty, humanity and chaos. It is a once-in-a-lifetime work of literature, the kind that changes your understanding of the world