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The Rich People Have Gone Away

The Rich People Have Gone Away

Summary

Ordinary New Yorkers are 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 marvel... A masterpiece' PAUL HARDING

'Prescient and profound' BRYAN WASHINGTON

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.

'A lush study' RAVEN LEILANI

'Riveting and original' CHARMAINE WILKERSON

Reviews

  • Almost uncomfortably apt in its depiction of human behaviour, impeccably accurate in its exploration of how easily we’re divided and incredibly funny even in the most un-funny moments, The Rich People Have Gone Away makes light and dark of one of the strangest times in human history and pulls you mercilessly along for a highly intelligent and thrilling ride
    Ore Agbaje-Williams, author of The Three of Us

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 Oxford Review.
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