James

The instant Sunday Times bestseller

Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2024

Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2024

Selected as a 'Book of the Year' in The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, Financial Times, Daily Mail, Independent, New Statesman, i newspaper, TLS, The Spectator and The Economist

'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' – Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha

James is a profound and ferociously funny reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. From Percival Everett, award-winning author of The Trees and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.

So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all . . .

‘Who should read this book? Every single person in the country’ – Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Tom Lake

'Scorchingly funny . . . A significant and exhilarating corrective to history, told in the most compelling of voices' – The Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year'

'Funny, wise, gracious; this may be Everett's best book yet' – Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

'Playful and viciously comic . . . James might be the book of the year and ought to have won the Booker Prize' – The Telegraph, 'Books of the Year'

'Unforgiving and compassionate, beautiful and brutal, a tragedy and a farce' – Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust