James (Signed Book) (2024 B&N Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Prize Winner) (National Book Award Winner)

by Percival Everett

Overview

Notes From Your Bookseller

A powerful story of family, home and freedom. Percival Everett has flipped the script on an American classic as Huck Finn steps to the side and Jim — James — takes center stage.

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SHORTLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD AND THE BOOKER PRIZE • KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and darkly humorous, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view

In development as a feature film to be produced by Steven Spielberg • A Best Book of the Year of the Year so Far for 2024: The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, W Magazine, Bustle, LitHub

"Genius"—The Atlantic • "A masterpiece that will help redefine one of the classics of American literature, while also being a major achievement on its own."—Chicago Tribune • "A provocative, enlightening literary work of art."—The Boston Globe • "Everett’s most thrilling novel, but also his most soulful."—The New York Times

When 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780385551625
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/29/2024
Edition description:	Signed Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

PERCIVAL EVERETT’s most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award) The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, and is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC.