Percival Everett

Encounter one of the most daring, original, and important voices in contemporary American literature with Percival Everett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author whose novels have redefined what American fiction can do and say. Writing with razor-sharp wit, devastating intelligence, and a profound moral seriousness, Everett subverts genre conventions, dismantles literary pretension, and confronts the deep wounds of American racism with a fearlessness and formal inventiveness that places him in the company of the greatest American writers. His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James (2024) — a radical reimagining of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim — became a landmark of American literature. His earlier novel Erasure (2001), a savage satire of the publishing industry’s appetite for Black trauma narratives, was adapted into the Academy Award-winning film American Fiction. Other essential works include the darkly comic The Trees, the absurdist I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and the experimental Telephone. Essential reading for every serious lover of American fiction.