The Water Dancer is a 2019 novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It is his first novel and was published on September 24, 2019, by One World, an imprint of Random House. It is a surrealist story set in the pre–Civil War South, concerning a superhuman protagonist named Hiram Walker who possesses photographic memory, but who cannot remember his mother, and is able to transport people over long distances by using a power known as "conduction" which can fold the Earth like fabric and allows him to travel across large areas via waterways.The novel debuted at number one on the New York Times fiction best-seller list and was selected for the revival of Oprah's Book Club.