James

Description

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2025

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.

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 cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Awards

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2025

Shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize

Reviews

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER * SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE * KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER * *  A Best Book of the Year of the Year so Far for 2024: The New York Times Book Review, TIME, 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

Author description

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 been adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles.