Vincent O. Carter – författare

The Bern Book is a travelogue, a memoir, a “diary of an isolated soul” (Darryl Pinckney), and a meditation on the myth and reality of race in midcentury Europe and America.

In 1953, having left the US and settled in Bern, Switzerland, Vincent O. Carter, a struggling writer, set about composing a “record of a voyage of the mind.” The voyage begins with Carter’s furiously good-humored description of how, every time he leaves the house, he must face the possibility of being asked “the hated question” (namely, Why did you, a black man born in America, come to Bern?). It continues with stories of travel, war, financial struggle, the pleasure of walking, the pain of self-loathing, and, through it all, various experiments in what Carter calls “lacerating subjective sociology.” Now this long-neglected volume is back in print for the first time since 1973.

'Luminous... a vibrant portrait of African-American life at the nation's crossroads' New York Times Book Review

'A rousing, inspired work, keenly observed and soulful... the novel sparkles with life, soaring with the loose flow of a jazzy improvisation' Boston Globe

Amerigo Jones grows up poor but surrounded by love in Jazz Age Kansas City. A precocious young dreamer, he longs for the college education that his parents could not have.

But as Amerigo begins to venture further away from his doting mother and father, he encounters a world marred by prejudice, where amid the bustle and the beauty, violence and injustice stalk the streets.

Such Sweet Thunder is a majestic and unforgettable child's-eye-view of Jim Crow America from a powerful chronicler of American family life.

Amerigo Jones grows up poor but surrounded by love in Jazz Age Kansas City. A precocious young dreamer, he longs for the college education that his parents could not have. But as Amerigo begins to venture further away from his doting mother and father, he encounters a world marred by prejudice, where amid the bustle and the beauty, violence and injustice stalk the streets. Such Sweet Thunder is a majestic and unforgettable child's-eye-view of Jim Crow America from a powerful chronicler of American family life.