This month we will be reading
James by Percival Everett

James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s 1884 novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. "It takes a lot of ambition, skill, and vision to reinvent one of the most iconic books in American letters, but Everett demonstrates he possesses those virtues in spades in James. The novel is a radical reworking of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, telling the story not from Huck’s perspective, but from the point of view of the enslaved man who accompanies Huck down the Mississippi River: Jim (or, as he clarifies, James). From James’s eyes, we see he is no mere sidekick but rather a thinker and a writer who is code-switching as illiterate and fighting desperately for freedom. Everett’s novel is a literary hat trick — a book that highlights the horrors in American history and complicates an American classic, all while also emerging as a work of exquisite originality in its own right." (New York Times, 10 Best Books 2024)

Knopf Doubleday, published 2024, 303 pages

We hope you can join us to discuss this winner of the 2024 National Book Award.