Walter Mosley – författare

A stellar addition to the Amistad list: a beautiful coming-of-age novel from MWA Grand Master and PEN and Edgar Award-winner Walter Mosley that explores love in all forms—romantic, familial, and platonic, centered on one Black family, including a neurodivergent man, and the found bonds that helps ground them.One of the most acclaimed writers working today, Walter Mosley spins magic once again in this beautiful novel that explores the lives of Black characters and one remarkable family through a lens both universal and unique. It touches on the lives of those whose deepest thoughts and motivations are seldom explored—including the neurodivergent, the incarcerated, and the immigrant tortured by their past—characters who will stay with you and change how you see the world.Ghalen, a brilliant young Black man, is the son of two seemingly mismatched parents. His mother, a gifted scientist, whose own mother expected her to exceed all the achievements in her family, and his father, a gentle cook at a small vegan restaurant, whose idiosyncratic nature shows the young woman a radically different love and understanding of life, despite his inexperience and lack of education.His parents’ grand love story starts it all off, setting us up to follow Ghalen and his family so deeply, that each new twist and turn feels personal.The journey through Ghalen’s coming-of-age tale, as he ventures out into the world, is marked with peaks and valleys and such a drive that you can’t help but strap in for it all, while not wanting it to end.Lush and cinematic, with the narrative drive and indelible power of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead and Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, Ghalen is one of this bestselling, prize-winning writer’s finest achievements.

A young slave boy is named and numbered 47 on a nineteenth-century Georgia plantation and encounters the brutality and injustice of the system of slavery.47 meets a strange being named Tall John who appears to be another slave boy - a runaway. But as 47 comes to realise, John is an extraterrestrial visitor who believes that his destiny is intertwined with the young slave's. Tall John is a science fiction creation but he is also a reinterpretation of High John the Conqueror - a character taken from old slave myths about a spirit come from Africa to confound the slave masters and (ultimately) to free all slaves.

Devil in a Blue Dress honors the tradition of the classic American detective novel by bestowing on it a vivid social canvas and the freshest new voice in crime writing in years, mixing the hard-boiled poetry of Raymond Chandler with the racial realism of Richard Wright to explosive effect.

Andrew Vachss called Devil in a Blue Dress, Walter Mosley's debut mystery featuring Easy Rawlins, a tough black private detective in L.A.'s Watts section, "the most self-assured, uniquely-voiced first novel I've ever read." The Wall Street Journal said of its sequel, A Red Death: "Remarkable...proves Mr. Mosley's debut was no fluke." Readers and critics agree that Walter Mosley is writing novels fit to stand alongside the giants of the L.A. hardboiled tradition.

With each succeeding mystery featuring his reluctant detective (and natural-born existentialist) Easy Rawlins, Walter Mosley gains new fans and builds on what is now recognized as a permanent addition to American crime writing. His current book is A Little Yellow Dog--another instant classic of suspense, style, and shrewd social observation.It's 1964. Easy Rawlins has given up the street life that has brought him so much trouble and grief. He's taken on a job as supervising custodian of Sojourner Truth Junior High School in Watts. For two years he's been getting up early and going off to work. He wears nice clothes and puts all his energy-and love-into his job and his adopted children. Easy likes his new life, even though he feels empty and a little bored sometimes. But all that is about to change.Easy comes in early one morning to find one of the teachers already in her classroom. She has a dog with her and a story about a husband gone mad. Before Easy knows what's happening, the teacher is in his arms. Before the day is over the teacher is gone, leaving Easy with her dog, and the handsomest corpse Easy has ever seen is found in the school garden. That night a second corpse turns up.Easy may have left the streets but he hasn't been forgotten. The world is changing faster than he can keep up. The police believe that Easy is involved in the murders. Old enemies are waiting to get even. The principal of the school wants to fire him. His old friends aren't the same and his new friends might be his death. Easy wants back into his careful little life, but that door is closed. A murderer is running loose somewhere. And a little yellow dog plots revenge.

From Spike Lee's encouragement of independent, community fundraising to Joycelyn Elders's warning about the failings of our "sick-care" system to Stanley Crouch's disputation on "heroic" versus "anarchic" individuality, Black Genius is an exceptional, unique colloquy. Conceived by acclaimed novelist Walter Mosley and sponsored by the New York University Africana Studies Program and the Institute of African American Affairs, this book originated as a series of community conversations where "visionaries with solutions" shared powerful views on personal and communal struggles, triumphs, and aspirations. The list of contributors suggests the range of perspectives and talents brought to bear on such issues as economics, political power, work, authority, and culture. Black Genius is a point of departure for vigorous discussion of our current realities and goals for the future-and a portrait of "genius" that leads the way to enriching American life in the twenty-first century.