Percival Everett – författare

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Percival Everett's The Trees is a powerful satire of revenge and racial justice in America.‘Page-turning comic horror’ – The Guardian‘Satire in the great tradition of Swift by way of South Park’ – The Daily Telegraph‘Hilarious and horrifying’ – The New YorkerWhen the rural town of Money, Mississippi is beset by a series of brutal murders, a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive. They're greeted with resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a mob of racist white townsfolk.This, they expect. Less predictable, however, is the second corpse which appears at each crime scene: that of a man resembling Emmett Till, the young Black boy lynched in the same town sixty-five years earlier.As a spate of copycat killings spreads across the country, what begins as a murder investigation soon becomes a journey into the soul of America’s violent past . . . Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning and Booker prize-shortlisted novel James.

'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' – Roddy Doyle'A brilliant retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of the enslaved Jim' – The ObserverJames is a profound and ferociously funny novel from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett.The Sunday Times BestsellerWinner of the Pulitzer Prize for FictionWinner of the National Book Award for FictionWinner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionShortlisted for the Booker PrizeShortlisted for the Dublin Literary AwardFinalist for the Orwell Prize for Political FictionThe Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .A 'Book of the Year' in The Observer, The Times & Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Spectator, New Statesman, Independent, TLS, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, i newspaper, The Economist, The Irish Times, The New York Times, TIME and The New Yorker'Who should read this book? Every single person in the country' – Ann Patchett'Scorchingly funny and action-packed' – The Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year''This may be Everett's best book yet' – Bonnie Garmus'Playful and viciously comic' – The Telegraph, 'Books of the Year''My favourite novel this year' – Salman Rushdie

#20 in the New York Times '100 Best Books of the 21st Century'Adapted into the Oscar-nominated major motion picture, American Fiction.By the twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Trees and James.'Truly brilliant.' Los Angeles Review of Books'A classic.' The Times'A remarkable novel.' Wall Street Journal'Sublime . . . brilliant, uproarious . . . A wise novel about how we live.' Brandon Taylor With your book sales at an all-time low, your family falling apart, and your agent telling you you're not black enough, what's an author to do? Thelonius 'Monk' Ellison has the answer. Or does he . . . ? Winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction'One of the most original and forceful novels to have emerged from America in years.' TLS'A furious whirl of a book. It made me howl with laughter . . . and rage, and sorrow, and affinity.' Lisa McInerney'Seminal doesn't even come close. This novel is Everett at his finest, full of trademark protest, humanity and incisive humour, all wrapped up in one hell of a story.' Courttia Newland'Hilarious. . . Everett is a first-rate word wrangler.' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

NAMED A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF THE YEAR BY TIME, NPR, THE SEATTLE TIMES, ELLE, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, AND OPRAH DAILY A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view • From the “literary icon” (Oprah Daily) and Pulitzer Prize Finalist whose novel Erasure is the basis for Cord Jefferson’s critically acclaimed film American Fiction"If you liked Demon Copperhead, by Barbara Kingsolver, read James, by Percival Everett" —The Washington PostWhen the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Theodore Street is driving towards the ocean where he plans to drown himself. But on the way he is hit by a van and he sails through the windscreen, his head sliced from his body. At this funeral days later, he sits up in his coffin, apparently resurrected. Theodore becomes an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press, a prized specimen for scientists and Satan incarnate to an obscure religious cult deep in the desert. Fascinating, surreal and wildly satirical, Percival Everett sends up the press, religion, UFOs and the military, and offers a meditation on what it is to be alive.

Training horses is dangerous - a head-to-head confrontation with 1,000 pounds of muscle takes courage. It is these same qualities that allow John and his uncle Gus to live in the beautiful high desert of Wyoming. A black horse trainer is a curiosity, at the very least, but the brutal murder of a young gay man pushes this small community to the teetering edge of intolerance. Highly praised for his storytelling and ability to address the toughest issues of our time with a touching originality, Everett offers a brilliant novel that explores a divided America.

Part parable, part fantasy novel, part laugh-out-loud satire, American Desert is the story of Theodore Street, a college professor on the brink of committing suicide. When the decision is taken out of his hands--he's hit by a car and his head is severed from his body--he must come to terms with himself. At his funeral, he sits up in his own coffin with the stitches that bind his head to his body clearly visible. Everyone is horrified by this resurrection. He becomes a source of fear and embarrassment to his daughter, and an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press and the scientific communities, and is anointed as a sort of devil by an obscure religious cult. In the process, Theodore manages to reestablish his relationship with his estranged wife and family and to rediscover the value of his life. In this experimental, satirical, and bizarre novel, critically acclaimed author Percival Everett once again takes on the assumptions of a culture whose priorities have gone out of whack. He lampoons the press, religion, and academia while offering, ultimately, an existential meditation of what constitutes being alive.

A wide-ranging anthology of experimental writing—prose, poetry, and hybrid—from its most significant practitioners and innovators  A variety of names have been used to describe fiction, poetry, and hybrid writing that explore new forms and challenges mainstream traditions. Those phrases include experimental, conceptual, avant-garde, hybrid, surfiction, fusion, radical, slip-stream, avant-pop, postmodern, self-conscious, innovative, L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E writing, alternative, and anti- or new literature. Conceptualisms: The Anthology of Prose, Poetry, Visual, Found, E- & Hybrid Writing as Contemporary Art is the first major anthology of writing that offers readers an overview of this other tradition as it lives in the early decades of the 21st century.Featuring over 100 pieces from more than 90 authors, this anthology offers a plethora of aesthetics and approaches to a wide variety subjects. Editor Steve Tomasula has gathered poems, prose, and hybrid pieces that all challenge our understanding of what literature means. Intended as a collection of the most exciting and bold literary work being made today, Tomasula has put a spotlight on the many possibilities available to writers and readers wishing for a glimpse of literature’s future.Readers will recognize authors who have shaped contemporary writing, as among them Lydia Davis, Charles Bernstein, Jonathan Safran Foer, Shelley Jackson, Nathaniel Mackey, David Foster Wallace, and Claudia Rankine. Even seasoned readers will find authors, and responses to the canon, not yet encountered. Conceptualisms is a book of ideas for writers, teachers and scholars, as well as readers who wonder how many ways literature can live.The text features headnotes to chapters on themes such as sound writing, electronic literature, found text, and other forms, offering accessible introductions for readers new to this work. An online companion presents statements about the work and biographies of the authors in addition to audio, video, and electronic writing that can’t be presented in print. Visit www.conceptualisms.info to read more.

'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' – Roddy DoyleJames is a profound and ferociously funny novel from one of our greatest living writers, Percival Everett.The Sunday Times BestsellerWinner of the National Book Award for FictionWinner of the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in FictionShortlisted for the Booker PrizeFinalist for the Orwell Prize for FictionThe Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .A 'Book of the Year' in The Observer, The Times & Sunday Times, The Guardian, Daily Mail, Daily Express, The Spectator, New Statesman, Independent, TLS, The Daily Telegraph, Financial Times, i newspaper, The Economist, The Irish Times, The New York Times, TIME and The New Yorker'Who should read this book? Every single person in the country' – Ann Patchett'Scorchingly funny and action-packed' – The Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year''This may be Everett's best book yet' – Bonnie Garmus'Playful and viciously comic' – The Telegraph, 'Books of the Year''My favourite novel this year' – Salman Rushdie

In Assumption, Percival Everett is on top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning.Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman’s murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt takes him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other from the author of Erasure, now an Oscar-nominated feature film.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

Damned If I Do is a set of brilliantly postmodern short stories from the twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Trees, James and Erasure.An artist, a cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen and even a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets and a sexual identity problem.Everett skewers race, class, identity, surrealism and much more in this masterful short story collection from one of America's most inventive living writers.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

Dr. No is the spy thriller as you've never read it before! Reinvented by Percival Everett, the twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Trees and James. 'Clever, funny and mercilessly satirical.' – The TimesWala Kitu is a professor of mathematics at Brown University, specializing in nothing. Kitu is content with nothing – studying it, having it, doing it – until his research places him in the sights of billionaire and would-be Bond villain John Sill, who enlists the professor’s help to steal a deposit of nothing from Fort Knox and use it to reduce the United States of America to nothing.Sill wants vengeance for another act of all-American villainy: the murder of his father, a witness to the state-sanctioned assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. His mission is everything: ‘This country has never given anything to us and it never will.'Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

I Am Not Sidney Poitier is a comic tour de force from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, twice Booker Prize-shortlisted author of James and Erasure.The sudden death of Not Sidney Poitier’s mother orphans him at age eleven. He is left with a name no one understands, an uncanny resemblance to an Oscar-winning actor, and serious amount of shares in the Turner Corporation.Percival Everett’s novel follows Not Sidney’s tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin colour with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not Sidney learns to navigate a world that doesn’t know what to do with him.‘American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New YorkerPart of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeFinalist for the PEN / Faulkner Award for FictionPercival Everett by Virgil Russell is a story inside a story inside a story. A man visits his ageing father in a nursing home, where his father writes the novel he imagines his son would write. Or is it the novel that the son imagines his father would imagine, if he were to imagine the kind of novel the son would write?Not only is Percival Everett by Virgil Russell a powerful, compassionate meditation on old age and its humiliations, it is an ingenious culmination of Everett’s recurring preoccupations. All of his prior work, his metaphysical and philosophical enquiries, his investigations into the nature of narrative, have led to this masterful book.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

‘Absorbing in its simplicity about bourgeois banality and the quest for expression’ New York TimesSo Much Blue is a gorgeous novel about art, memory and self-deception from the author of Erasure, now an Oscar-nominated film.Kevin Pace is working on a painting that he won't allow anyone to see: not his children; not his best friend, Richard; not even his wife, Linda. The painting is a canvas of twelve feet by twenty-one feet and three inches, covered entirely in shades of blue. It may be his masterpiece or it may not; he doesn't know, nor does he particularly care.What Kevin does care about are the events of the past: the affair he had with a young artist in Paris ten years ago and, further back, his journey to an El Salvador on the brink of war to retrieve Richard’s drug-dealing brother. So Much Blue is a brilliant examination of how the past collides with present, and the secrets we keep from even ourselves.'So Much Blue is such a perfectly structured novel . . . A generous, thrilling book by a man who might well be America's most under-recognized literary master' NPRPart of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

'[Percival Everett's] books always feel like an encounter with substantive, playful thinking . . . sad, affecting and marvelous' New York TimesA finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, Telephone is an astonishing story of love, loss and grief from Percival Everett, author of The Trees, Dr No and Erasure (now an Oscar-nominated film).Zach Wells is a perpetually dissatisfied geologist-slash-paleobiologist. Expert in an incredibly niche field, he spends his days playing chess with his daughter, trading puns with his wife as she does yoga, and dodging committee work at the college where he teaches.After his daughter is diagnosed with a fatal illness, Wells finds a cryptic plea for help tucked into a secondhand jacket bought online. Desperately seeking a way avoid his newfound sense of powerlessness, he embarks for New Mexico on a quixotic rescue mission.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

‘Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy’ – The New York TimesPart Southern Gothic, part gritty Western, Walk Me to the Distance is a haunting journey into the American badlands. Percival Everett brings this harsh landscape to life, showing a world where cruelty is a way of life.David Larson can never go home.His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won't even have the newly returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow, and her disabled son. Their unconventional family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence.Part of the Picador Collection showcasing the best of modern literature.

‘American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New YorkerCraig Suder, third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, is in a slump. His batting average is shocking, his marriage somehow worse, and he secretly fears he’s inherited his mother’s insanity. Ordered to take a midseason rest, Suder instead takes his LP of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and flees.A dazzling tale of madness, confinement and the need for escape, Suder introduced Percival Everett to the world as a writer already fully capable of conjuring whole lives and worlds on the page.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

‘American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New YorkerIn Watershed, Percival Everett, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James, turns his focus once again to the injustices of recent American history, exploring the relationship between Native American activists and Black Panther groups who bonded over their shared enemies in the 1960s Civil Rights movement.On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets.Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.Read Percival’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

It turned out that my music had never left me. It had been stolen, yes, but not stolen away. I had simply never been free to play it . . .When Arthur Champion, a gifted young music scholar, is sent away to war, he experiences the horrors of the Somme trenches. Surviving the slaughter, he begins to forge a new life for himself, discovering the profound, subversive power of his own musical voice.His extraordinary odyssey takes him from playing in the jazz clubs of Paris to performing for Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and back again, his only constant companions his humour, his abiding love for music, and the racism of the age.Serious Music is the outstanding story of a young Black man’s struggle to find his place in a world that resents his very existence. It is a profoundly moving novel about trauma, survival, and the weaponization of art, and it is sure to cement Percival Everett’s reputation as one of our greatest living writers.‘An American master at the peak of his powers’ – Financial Times

It turned out that my music had never left me. It had been stolen, yes, but not stolen away. I had simply never been free to play it . . .When Arthur Champion, a gifted young music scholar, is sent away to war, he experiences the horrors of the Somme trenches. Surviving the slaughter, he begins to forge a new life for himself, discovering the profound, subversive power of his own musical voice.His extraordinary odyssey takes him from playing in the jazz clubs of Paris to performing for Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and back again, his only constant companions his humour, his abiding love for music, and the racism of the age. This is a profoundly moving novel about trauma, survival, and the weaponization of art.Serious Music is the outstanding story of a young Black man’s struggle to find his place in a world that resents his very existence. It is sure to cement Percival Everett’s reputation as one of America’s greatest writers.‘An American master at the peak of his powers’ – Financial Times

An exceptional new collection of short stories by Percival Everett, author of the highly praised and wickedly funny novel Erasure. An artist, a cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen and even a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets and a sexual identity problem.