Dr. No

By Percival Everett,

Book cover of Dr. No

Book description

WINNER OF THE 2023 PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising

The protagonist of Percival Everett’s puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Dr. No as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

When a prospective agent asked me who I most aspired to be like as a writer, I said Percival Everett. Her response was, ‘But you’re not black?’

To me, labeling Percival Everett as a ‘black writer’ does him a huge disservice because, above all else, he’s unpredictable, quirky, and seriously funny. I love this book because it’s weird and subverted, with a hero who’s a mathematical expert in nothing–confronted by a villain who wants to steal and control nothing. It’s fun and frothy, with tangents and trapdoors all over the place. Like most, I came to Percival Everett via The…

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