Books by Percival Everett
“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
“How to explain The Trees? It has so many disparate ingredients, which should not work together, but absolutely do. It is a gritty examination of the legacy of extreme racism and lynching in the Deep South. It’s a revenge thriller. It’s a buddy cop farce. It’s a detective novel with shades of the supernatural. And, well, it’s one of the best, most readable, funniest, and most hard-hitting novels I have ever read.” Read more...
Editor’s Choice: Our 2022 Novels of the Year
Cal Flyn, Five Books Editor
Interviews where books by Percival Everett were recommended
Editor’s Choice: Our 2022 Novels of the Year, recommended by Cal Flyn
Author and Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn highlights her favourite novels of 2022—from Jennifer Egan’s highly anticipated follow-up to the multi-award-winning A Visit From the Goon Squad, to a debut novel by a twenty-something writer who gave voice to cancer, literally.
The Best Fiction of 2022: The Booker Prize Shortlist, recommended by Neil MacGregor
The Booker Prize is awarded each year to the best original novel written in the English language. We asked the art historian Neil MacGregor, chair of this year’s judging panel, to talk us through the six novels that made the 2022 shortlist—and why fiction can be a most effective means of engaging us emotionally in social and political crisis elsewhere.
The Best Political Novels of 2024: The Orwell Prize for Fiction
The Orwell Prize for Political Fiction is awarded annually to “outstanding novels and collections of short stories, first published in the UK or Ireland, that illuminate major social and political themes, present or past, through the art of narrative.”
Novels to Read With Your Book Club in 2024
Joining a book discussion group is a great way to meet fellow book-lovers—but one of the trickiest things can be deciding which books you should tackle together. Here are our suggestions: recently published books that should appeal to a broad range of readers—and which will offer your book club plenty to discuss over a glass of wine.
Notable Novels of Spring 2024, recommended by Cal Flyn
Looking for a new book to get stuck into? Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn offers a round-up of the most notable novels of spring 2024, including fresh titles from Percival Everett and Alexis Wright, plus the ‘lost’ final novel by Gabriel García Márquez—published a decade after his death. See all our best novels of 2024 recommendations