Recommendations from our site
“Dominic Hoffman narrates this reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but this time Jim tells his own story. Hoffman’s performance captures the varying tone of Jim’s dialogue, highlighting the shifts in his vocabulary and rhythm. With its subtlety and attention to detail, Hoffman’s narration reinforces Jim’s character and narrative arcs as Jim takes back his agency in life.” Read more...
“James is obviously connected to Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It is not a retelling of that story, but in a way it’s the same universe. Percival has said himself that it’s not a correction. But is it a revisionist book? Yes, I guess it is. It’s from the perspective of Jim, or James, and we look at slavery from his perspective. We look at his incredible struggle, how his family is affected, how he has been separated from them and his struggle to reach them again. It has a revenge theme, kind of. But I guess I look at it as there being some historical catharsis, reading this book in relation to historical racism and slavery. It’s more of a cathartic narrative than a derivative one.” Read more...
The Best Novels of 2024: The Booker Prize Shortlist
Nitin Sawhney, Musicians, Music Critics & Scholar
“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
