Description

By (author) Everett Percival

Short /annotation:
An immensely powerful and bitingly satirical retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Huck’s friend, the enslaved Jim.

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”Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them” – Roddy Doyle

James is a profound and ferociously funny novel
from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett.

The Sunday Times Bestseller
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
Winner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize
Shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award
Finalist for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.

So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .

A ”Book of the Year” in The Observer, The Times & Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Spectator, New Statesman, Independent, TLS, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, i newspaper, The Economist, The Irish Times, The New York Times, TIME and The New Yorker

”Who should read this book? Every single person in the country” – Ann Patchett

”Scorchingly funny and action-packed” – The Sunday Times, ”Books of the Year”

”This may be Everett”s best book yet” – Bonnie Garmus

”Playful and viciously comic” – The Telegraph, ”Books of the Year”

”My favourite novel this year” – Salman Rushdie

Review quote:
A captivating response to Mark Twain’s classic that is both a bold exploration of a dark chapter in history and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit

Review quote:
I’m demanding that you read Percival Everett’s novel James, in which Everett takes the camera from Twain’s Huck Finn and hands it to the slave, Jim. Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them

Review quote:
James is funny and horrifying, brilliant and riveting. In telling the story of Jim instead of Huckleberry Finn, Percival Everett delivers a powerful, necessary corrective to both literature and history. I found myself cheering both the writer and his hero. Who should read this book? Every single person in the country

Review quote:
Pure brilliance. Funny, wise, gracious; this may be Everett”s best book yet

Review quote:
Percival Everett is a giant of American letters, and James is a canon-shatteringly great book. Unforgiving and compassionate, beautiful and brutal, a tragedy and a farce, this brilliant novel rewrites literary history to let us hear the voices it has long suppressed

Review quote:
My favourite novel this year was James by Percival Everett. By giving the runaway Jim from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn his own voice (or voices) and his dignity – James, not Jim – he adds a dimension that’s missing from the original, and, I think, improves on it

Review quote:
Scorchingly funny . . . A significant and exhilarating corrective to history, told in the most compelling of voices
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