Home
/
Fiction
/
Invisible Child
Invisible Child
Jan 17, 2026 6:14 PM

Author:Andrea Elliott

Invisible Child

Based on nearly a decade of reporting, Invisible Child follows eight dramatic years in the life of Dasani Coates, a child with an imagination as soaring as the skyscrapers near her Brooklyn homeless shelter. Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolise Brooklyn's gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani moves with her family from shelter to shelter, this story traces the passage of Dasani's ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north.

Dasani comes of age as New York City's homeless crisis is exploding. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani leads her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system.

When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love?

By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family and the cost of inequality.

Reviews

Andrea Elliott's reporting has an intimate, almost limitless feel to it... The result of this unflinching, tenacious reporting is a rare and powerful work whose stories will live inside you long after you've read them.

—— New York Times

A monumental work of journalism

—— Sunday Times

This is non-fiction writing at its best - uncluttered, evocative and well-researched... This is not a polemic. Elliott bears witness but does not preach; she shows but rarely tells. She does not pretend to be a neutral bystander (how could you immerse yourself in a struggling family for eight years and not root for them?) but does not intrude on her own storytelling. It is not a morality play either. The villains are too elusive and the heroes too flawed for that. This is structural, generational poverty at work in all its gruesome, demeaning inhumanity and punitive, institutional brutality.

—— Gary Younge , New Statesmen

A gripping and propulsive work of narrative non-fiction . . . [an] indelible, virtuosic portrait of contemporary America

—— Financial Times

A triumph of in-depth reporting and storytelling ... a visceral blow-by-blow depiction of what 'structural racism' has meant in the lives of generations of one family ... above all else it is a celebration of a little girl-an unforgettable heroine whose frustration, elation, exhaustion, and intelligence will haunt your heart.

—— Ariel Levy

An intimate exploration of poverty and racism in the U.S., as well as a portrait of a young person's resilience

—— Time

Invisible Child is hands down the best book I have read in years. Astonishing, remarkable, shocking, powerful, gripping, compelling. All of these words apply and more. This is a book of immense importance, written with tremendous craft and skill, but also compassion and verve . . . For those who have not read Invisible Child I am jealous, you are in for an extraordinary ride. Simply put, this is a masterpiece.

—— Thomas Harding, bestselling author of Hanns and Rudolf and The House by the Lake

Sure to linger in the minds of many readers long after the last page has been turned... What easily could have been, in lesser hands, voyeuristic or sensational is instead a rich narrative, empathetically told. Elliott is a masterful storyteller and, by sharing Dasani's story, she calls on all of us to dismantle the systems that so often failed her and countless others

—— NPR

A tour de force

—— The i

An eye-opening, heartbreaking and deeply enraging book about the realities of contemporary US inequality

—— Irish Times

A tender portrait of a family, and a tour of America's broken welfare systems and racist policies.

—— The Atlantic

A fascinating and powerful epic

—— Stylist

A towering feat of reporting that paints, layer by layer, an extraordinary portrait of a child, a family, a city, and the nation that produced them. From start to finish, she sustains an insatiably curious and deeply empathetic focus on worlds that so many people work hard, if mostly unconsciously, to never really see.

—— Howard W. French, author of Born in Blackness

A wonderful and important book.

—— Tracy Kidder, author of Mountains Beyond Mountains

Invisible Child is a tour de force of immersive reporting and a meticulous and unflinching depiction of intergenerational American poverty... Elliott exposes the granular texture of daily life with deep empathy, the punishing sameness of material want, and in the process paints a sweeping portrait of contemporary American life.

—— Anthony Lukas Prize Judge’s Citation , Nieman Foundation

Both a moving portrait and a devastating critique of America's enduring colour divide

—— Laura Spinney , New Statesmen

Swiftly paced, unfussily structured, and in fluent and spirited prose, it racks the history of a magical city created by a demi-goddess.

—— Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*

An epic adventure-filled saga, you'll be intoxicated by its magic.

—— Glamour

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid, an intimate epic, a serious comedy of manners.

—— The Times

A vigorous, enjoyable epic that hymns the enduring might of narrative over more fleeting forces.

—— Mail on Sunday

This latest addition to his great body of work deserves nothing but celebration and gratitude.

—— New Statesman

A joyous masterpiece that will remind the world that, aside from being a free speech hero, he is one of the planet's greatest writers.

—— Evening Standard

There is a welcome levity to his prose here as he riffs on myth-making, culture clashes or the nature of storytelling itself.

—— Daily Mail

Victory City has the tone of mischief Rushdie is always able to channel into his bright, fluid storytelling. Amid all the courtly intrigue and fantastic realism woven through the extensive cast of characters, fleeting dashes of wicked humour sit up and pierce the tale delectably. Rushdie's sharp, camouflaged satire speaks to everything, from religious extremism to greed to patriarchal misogyny. It all just seems to unspool from him without effort.

—— Irish Independent

The best thing Salman Rushdie has written in years... One of the richest and most exuberant books he has given us.

—— Scotsman

Rushdie's creation is vivid, compelling, and entirely his own.

—— Daily Mirror

Salman Rushdie is a genius and I wish he could read me a story - or a chapter of his book - every night before bed. The scale and scope of his intellect and his imagination is googolplex.

—— A.M. Homes, author of THE UNFOLDING

It does not resemble any other novel I could name. A major accomplishment by one of our greatest living writers.

—— Michael Cunningham, author of THE HOURS

No one, and I mean no one, can bring an entire world to life... like Salman Rushdie.

—— Gary Shteyngart, author of OUR COUNTRY FRIENDS

Mesmerising and soul-stirring. Victory City is an epic tribute to the power of words as well as the resilience of women. Rushdie is without a peer in proving that literature soars above tyranny and bigotry, and imagination roars louder than censorship

—— Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees

This is Salman Rushdie at his most virtuosic.

—— Hari Kunzru, author of THE IMPRESSIONIST

It will show you the adult world in a whole new light. Only a master storyteller can do that.

—— Jarvis Cocker, author of GOOD POP, BAD POP

A storyteller who reminds that death may take away a lot of things, but never the power of our words.

—— Colum McCann, author of LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN

A capacious and sweeping telling in which writing about the past is a way of also staring dead on at the present.

—— Natasha Trethewey, author of NATIVE GUARD

Victory City stands out as one of the year's literary highlights... that feels like an instant classic.

—— Bea Carvalho, Head of Fiction at Waterstones

Rushdie is an assured storyteller at the height of his powers, revealing once again how important India is as a fount of his imagination.

—— Conversation

Victory City is one of Rushdie's very best novels. It is also a luminous, italicised, vibrant reminder of the possibilities of free expression and of the untrammelled imagination. In this instance, the medium is indeed the message.

—— Tortoise Media

Victory City can, in many ways, be read as an entertaining jaunt through Indian history, though it is history through the kaleidoscopic and sweeping lens of a fairy tale... this brilliantly magical tale.

—— Irish Independent

This sweeping, intricately crafted fairy tale is underscored by very human characters and Rushdie's signature wit.

—— Culture Whisper, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

A grand entertainment, in a tale with many strands, by an ascended master of modern legends.

—— Kirkus Review

Rushdie's magical style unfurls wonders.

—— Washington Post

Rushdie's Victory City is another fabulous novel set in his native India... He's a master who never forgets that the main goal of a storyteller is to entertain rather than educate or pontificate.

—— New York Journal of Books

Rushdie is, above all else...one of the most powerful defenders of story we have... Victory City is a victory for Rushdie - and for every reader who enters its gates.

—— Harper's Bazaar

Rushdie succeeds in creating a kind of incantatory prose that befits the fabulist nature of the story... he can enchant readers like few other writers.

—— Literary Review

This is a man at his full-strength, high-tar best - with his deeply humane worldview, his brilliance at set-pieces and, above all, the thrilling wildness of his imagination on irresistible display.

—— Reader's Digest

With its carousel of shifting politics and history, Victory City is Rushdie's most textured and triumphant wonder tale yet.

—— Hindu

Utterly enchanting.

—— Eastern Eye

Rushdie's return to magic, myth, and India's ancient stories is dazzling. With mercurial prose and vivid renderings, Rushdie never loses us in Victory City's convolutions, but instead builds our trust to travail the many grand events of Pampa's imagined empire.

—— Esquire

A rich, dramatic saga... The many moments of comedy...show Salman Rushdie's storytelling skills and his endearing sense of playfulness... the main feeling the reader gets is of a storyteller enjoying himself.

—— Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

Rushdie is an expert at mixology; he's the DJ Shadow of text with references and allusions to high and low culture from Finnegans Wake to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... a well-told tale that gets bums on seats.

—— National

There's a magical thread of storytelling running through the veins of each character we meet in this book... a joy to read.

—— UK Press Syndication

A work of great imagination... In Victory City the power of the written word and of the storyteller remain triumphant.

—— NB

Rushdie’s sheer love of fiction is irrepressible.

—— Daily Telegraph, *Books of the Year*

A wonderfully entertaining literary hybrid

—— The Times, *Books of the Year*

Victory City is Salman Rushdie at his imaginative best… sweeping the reader on a journey that feels epic in a mere 320 pages

—— i, *Books of the Year*

From start to finish, the reader or listener can only be impressed by the literary flair of Rushdie's compelling storytelling... Victory City is a joy to listen to.

—— Entertainment Focus
Comments
Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.zzdbook.com All Rights Reserved