This is an extraordinary book by a wonderful writer. I have been a big fan of Percival Everett ever since I read Erasure, over 20 years ago. As a writer, he is engaged at every level, experimental, bold, witty, funny, intellectually and politically committed. James is a celebration of and a profound literary encounter with Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). Everett retells the story from the point of view of "Jim" the runaway slave. But this is much more than a re-telling; it is both an interpretation of Twain’s story and a subversive transformation of its meanings. What is so masterful in Everett’s writing is his control of the literary registers he uses. He can write tense adventure sequences, hilarious farce, deeply moving scenes of reckoning, violent action, and absorbing domestic fiction. This is a story of survival and revenge. I couldn’t stop reading and am now getting my breath back so that I can read it again.
'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…
Full disclosure! I know Jenny Newman and I have always admired the sharpness and boldness of her writing. She is a powerful storyteller and for me, when I was at last able to read her new novel it was an electric moment. In the Blood is a dramatic and unsettling story about a young girl growing up in a decrepit country house just after the second world war. As an evacuee in Wales Jackie is lodged with a huntsman and becomes more hound than girl. The extraordinary empathic link that young Jackie shares with horse and hound and fox and with the natural world is utterly persuasive and beautifully evoked. Newman’s source of inspiration is the magical, medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The three hunts described in the novel create a structure that is both realistic and symbolic. The outcome will keep you reading, perched on the edge of your sofa.
North Wales, 1945.
Twelve-year-old Jackie is an evacuee, Iolo, her host, is touched by Gwyn ap
Nudd, the Welsh god of the chase, and from him Jackie learns hunting's ancient
secret lore. She knows every hound in his pack, every stream and covert in
their valley, and by sleeping in their kennels, understands their dreams. By
the war's end she sees herself as more hound than girl.
When her mother
comes to reclaim her, Jackie is transplanted to a derelict estate in
Westmorland. Its owner, Major Wetheral, is the local Master of Foxhouds. But his
English way of hunting flouts…
This book is a memoir and indeed a witness statement: the story of an unequal friendship between the author and his undergraduate best friend, Inigo Philbrick, a friendship that goes horribly wrong. Whitfield writes with the arresting immediacy of fiction. He reproduces key moments of dialogue and his descriptive writing presents a strong sense of place: key streets in London, restaurants, galleries, cocktail lounges, lavish American resorts, even walks across South London. For me, this book provided a revelatory insight into the market for contemporary art. I had never imagined that business deal brinkmanship could be so tense and exciting, especially when the deal tips over into crime and fraud. I found myself searching online for the artists mentioned in the book and images of their work. As for Inigo Philbrick, the charismatic wide boy, addicted to big money and the adrenalin rush of acquisition, well, art is the least important thing in the deal.
A 2024 Summer Read in the Economist, Telegraph, Guardian, the i, and the Evening Standard
'An art world Great Gatsby, deliciously withering and dishy.' Patrick Radden Keefe
'Explosive ... the inside story of the biggest art fraud in American history' Guardian
'Liar's Poker, but for art' Economist
'A brilliant, devastating expose' William Boyd
DECEPTION IS A FINE ART.
When Orlando Whitfield first meets Inigo Philbrick, they are students dreaming of dealing art for a living. Their friendship lasts for fifteen years until one day, Inigo - by then the most successful dealer of his generation - disappears, accused of a…
A frisky Neo-Victorian tale about the 19th century novelist Marian Evans Lewes, known as George Eliot and her admiring German publisher Max Duncker. This is a story about readers and the writers they adore. Needless to say nothing is at seems and everything goes wrong. In Berlin, Max Duncker and his brother, Wolfgang, own a thriving publishing business, which owes its success to one woman: the Sibyl, or Mary Ann Evans, better known as George Eliot,who is writing the final installment of her bestselling serial Middlemarch. Max is as fond of gambling and brothels as Wolfgang is of making a profit and berating his spendthrift brother, but Max is given a chance to prove his worth by visiting the Sibyl and her not-quite-husband Lewes, to finalize the publishing rights to her new novel. The Sibyl proves to be as enthralling and intelligent as her books, bewitching Max and all of those around her.
But Wolfgang has an ulterior motive for Max's visit; he wants his brother to consider the beautiful eighteen-year-old Countess Sophie von Hahn as a potential wife. An acquaintance from Max's childhood, she comes from a German family of great wealth. However, Sophie proves to be nothing like the angelic vision of domesticity Max envisaged; wild and willful, she gambles recklessly yet always wins, rides horses fiercely, and is happy to disobey authority, especially when it comes to her idol, George Eliot. Enchanted by this whirlwind of a woman, Max nevertheless fears he will never be able to tame her.
With its vivid portrayal of George Eliot and how she lived her life, and the turbulent love story of the countess and Max, Sophie and the Sibyl is both a compulsive read and a high literary achievement.
