Episode Description:
Literary Icon Percival Everett Joins the PBS Books Readers Club to Discuss James—Named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Time, NPR, The Seattle Times, Elle, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Oprah Daily
“To call James a retelling would be an injustice. Everett sends Mark Twain’s classic through the looking glass. What emerges is no longer a children’s book, but a blood-soaked historical novel stripped of all ornament. . . Genius.”
—The Atlantic
This month’s PBS Books Readers Club pick is James—the instant New York Times bestseller and highly acclaimed novel by distinguished Professor Percival Everett, that puts a transformative spin on the canonical work Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In James, Everett places Jim, the enslaved character from Twain’s novel, front and center in this powerful narrative, giving voice to his untold story. Brimming with humor while delivering biting observations on themes of race and freedom, James is a provocative and unforgettable page turner that will forever alter our perception of American literature.
Says Everett, “I have to say I didn’t write this as a corrective to Twain’s novel. He was telling the story of the adolescent white boy. And I’m telling the story of a full-grown black man who has a family and a life.”
Don’t miss the PBS Books Readers Club as eminent author Percival Everett shares his vision behind this remarkable novel destined to become a modern classic.
About the Book:
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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.
Guest Biography:
Percival Everett
Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including So Much Blue, Telephone, Dr No and The Trees, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. He has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His novel Erasure has now been adapted into the major film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles.
Readers Club Hosts:
