Between the World and Me talks of grip of fear around US black society

Published in 2015 to both critical and commercial acclaim, Between the World and Me takes the form of a letter from a father to his teenage son, detailing the experience of author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who lived as a black man in the United States.

Coates has listed James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time, written in 1963 on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation as an inspiration for his book. The similarities between the two go beyond their letter-writing narrative formats.

The comparison also serves as a reminder that though things have improved markedly since the days of slavery and segregation, many issues still plague African-Americans.