An extract from James by Percival Everett
A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Percival Everett interview: ‘I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not’
The author of James, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2024, on how he sees himself as being in conversation with the creator of Huckleberry Finn, and the skills he learnt from reading Tristram Shandy
Read interviews with all of the longlisted authors here.
The inspirations behind my Booker-longlisted book
Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is the source of my novel. I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written. I do not view the work as a corrective, but rather I see myself in conversation with Twain.
The book that made me fall in love with reading
Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five.
The book I return to time and time again
Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. I love the way Butler creates the history of the family seemingly without effort and I love the humour.
The book I can’t get out of my head
There are too many to single out just one.
The book that changed the way I think about the world
Chester Himes’s novel Third Generation made me consider the politics of skin colour. I could see my own mother in the mother of the character and so formed a better understanding of people in general.
Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee
Chester Himes’s novel Third Generation made me consider the politics of skin colour
The book that changed the way I think about the novel
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy taught me the importance of play as an avenue to meaning. Also, I learned that important truths don’t need and often don’t come italicised or with brassy accompaniment.
The book that impressed me the most
Again, Tristram Shandy, for its intelligence and play. It challenges how a work of fiction is supposed to mean and make meaning. An 18th-century novel that could pass for post-modern (if there were such a thing).
The book I’m reading at the moment
Joseph Horowitz’s Dvořák’s Prophecy. This is a wonderful book about the construction of so-called high and low culture in turn-of-the-20th-century United States.
The Booker-nominated book everyone should read
James by Percival Everett
- By
- Percival Everett
- Published by
- Mantle
A profound meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
