Ta-Nehisi Coates returns to nonfiction and explores the power of stories in upcoming ‘The Message’

By HILLEL ITALIE
AP National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — For his first all-new book of nonfiction in nearly a decade, Ta-Nehisi Coates traveled the world. One World announced Thursday that Coates’ “The Message” will be published Oct. 1. “The Message” is set in Senegal, South Carolina and Palestine and focuses on a single question: In a time of growing strife and injustice, why do stories matter? Coates’ last new work of nonfiction, “Between the World and Me,” was a meditation on racism and police violence that won the National Book Award in 2015 and was likened by Nobel laureate Toni Morrison to the works of James Baldwin.