‘With my pencil, I wrote myself into being.’

In James, Percival Everett’s thrilling retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the enslaved Jim is allowed to tell his story for the first time. While journeying down the Mississippi with Huck, Jim has a series of adventures and encounters. Often terrifying but hilariously recounted, they highlight the absurdity of white superiority and the ways in which Jim has been forced to hide his true intellect and abilities. In Hernan Diaz’s words, James is a ‘canon-shatteringly great book’.

Described by The Washington Post as ‘One of the most inimitable and distinct voices in contemporary American fiction’, Percival is the author of over thirty books. The Trees was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. Erasure has been adapted into the Oscar-nominated film American Fiction starring Jeffrey Wright.

Presented in partnership with the Centre for New Writing, Creative Manchester and Blackwell’s.