❤️ loved this book because...
It provides a great counterpoint to Huck Finn, which we all grew up reading. It doesn't cancel that book, but it enlarges the world Twain created and shows us Jim in his full humanity as well as lending more complexity to all the other characters and making clearer sense of the world they inhabit. It takes the now archaic aspects of Twain's novel and shores them up elegantly so that, taken together, the two works form a sort of metanovel that is not only a picture of life on the brink of Civil War and all of the pain around slavery, domestic abuse and rampant cruelty, but a reflection on the power of literature itself, the role of education, family, and love, and how we perceive that time period and the literature about it. "James" felt like dialogue between Twain and Everett that Twain would have relished.
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🐇 I couldn't put it down
33 authors picked James as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…