This book explores the personal and political unrest of the early twenty-first century. Claudia Rankine crafts a hybrid of autobiographical essay and lyrical meditation to track the loneliness that is prevalent today: a reflection on the interplay of death and television, the USA after 9/11, psychotropic drugs, and the redemptive potential of language-poetic and crystal clear, full of sagacity, intellectual wit, and melancholy.Claudia Rankine, born in Jamaica in 1963, writes poetry and plays. She is professor of poetry at Yale University and a MacArthur Fellow. Her work has won her numerous prizes and awards. In 2018, Spector Books published her critically acclaimed work Citizen (Volte #5), which was selected for the SWR Bestenliste.Uda Strätling lives in Hamburg and has translated such authors as Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Sam Shepard, Joyce Carol Oates, and Aldous Huxley.