Friday Black
Book description
The instant New York Times bestseller
'An unbelievable debut' New York Times
Racism, but "managed" through virtual reality
Black Friday, except you die in a bargain-crazed throng
Happiness, but pharmacological
Love, despite everything
A Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Book for Fall 2018
Friday Black tackles urgent instances of racism and…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Friday Black as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Such a rule breaker. A complete disregard for the laws of nature. That can’t happen! I shouldn’t feel so for those characters! And yet, and yet! The characters that people these pages are real and convincing. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah takes us in and out of realities. His world is dark sibling to our everyday world, but even his most flawed characters resonate with dignity, and through skillful well-crafted revelation, the reader comes to understand why these characters struggle—often against societal forces larger/older/engrained—and even when his characters make bad decisions (lord knows a misbehaving character is what good fiction is about)…
From Steven's list on short stories to send your mind into the sublime.
The scenarios in Friday Black, at first, felt unbelievable, even though they were an amplification of rampant capitalism and racism that are already very real. I didn't want them to be real. Adjei-Brenyah rendered them so perfectly and developed his narrators' psychology so effectively (especially his retail workers, so reminiscent of a commercial world I used to inhabit) that I became immersed in these new realities.
The characters are underdogs by virtue of simply being Black people in America. But they are resilient and complex, finding unique ways to resist.
The writing is beautiful, with tightly turned phrases aptly…
From Chris' list on contemporary North American short story collections.
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