WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY IRENOSEN OKOJIE

'Gloria Naylor is gifted with timeless wisdom, bottomless empathy, and limitless language. Her novels will shine a light for readers and writers for generations to come' TAYARI JONES

'A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humour' New York Times Book Review

In postwar Brooklyn, on a quiet backstreet, there's a little place that draws people from all over - not for the food, and definitely not for the coffee. An in-between place that's only there when you need it, Bailey's Cafe is a crossroads where patrons stay for a while before making a choice: Move on or check out?

There's Sadie, the ladylike alcoholic with a mania for cleanliness; Sweet Esther, who caters to unspeakable appetites in a nearby 'boarding house', taking payment only in white roses; and Mariam, the Ethiopian child who may be the bearer of a miracle. Naylor's breath-taking novel is an enthralling fusion of lives whose courage, mystery and humour suggest nothing less than a blues tapestry of America.

'Gloria Naylor was one of the greatest novelists who ever lived. She holds a hallowed place in the canon, and also in hearts, minds, bodies, and spirits' ROBERT JONES, Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets

"Bailey's Cafe has the rhythm of music-and the power of religious allegory. Beneath its symbolic overlay are tales of fractured lives that will move even the most hardened reader" - Vogue

"Told in contrasting shades of harsh, comic and magic realism ... Crackles with passion and wit ... An unforgettable successor to Ellison's metaphor of the invisible man, and as incandescent" - Los Angeles Times

"A virtuoso orchestration of survival, suffering, courage and humour" - New York Times Book Review

"A powerhouse of a novel . . . It is a book with something of a comic Ellisonian or Faulknerian rhythm, a defiantly hopeful stance. Bailey's Cafe absorbs us in the mastery of its telling." - New York Newsday

"Gutsy . . . A collective blues performance in prose - a lyrical remembrance and triumph over personal catastrophe . . . A sublime achievement" - People

"A lacy, near-mystical cantata sung by several voices. This mix of myth, history and mysticism . . . offers a sensibility as rich in potential as that of the Latin American magical realists . . . Moving and memorable" - Boston Globe

"A dazzling novel. When you enter Bailey's Cafe, you won't leave without being touched by the wonder and the horror that lie there" - Entertainment Weekly