Recommendations from our site
“The magisterial craft of James by Percival Everett lies in its combination of biting humour and a page-turning plot, with ruminations on sovereignty and Voltaire along the way. Everett stays close, if not true, to the dangerous journeys of Huckleberry Finn, and draws on titans of post-Reconstruction African American writing to bring Jim to the foreground of the story. As we keep pace with our charismatic narrator, Twain’s tale of friendship on the run is converted into a larger history of collective freedom won through close encounters with the great American outdoors and its jealous, violent gatekeepers” Read more...
The Best Political Novels of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Fiction
“James is a reworking of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn narrated by Jim, the escaped slave with whom Finn travels on a raft. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly noted that in this version, Jim is ‘a Black man who’s mastered the art of minstrelsy to get what he needs from gullible white people.'” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
