James (Pulitzer Prize Winner): A Novel
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • 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
KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, TIME, and more.
"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
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
KIRKUS PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE • A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, LA Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Economist, TIME, and more.
"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
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon, this brilliant and tender novel radically illuminates Jim’s agency, intelligence, and compassion as never before. James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.
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Community Reviews
I finally made the space to read James by Percival Everett, and I’m so glad I did. This was my first book by Everett, and I can now say I’m a fan. Full transparency: I’ve never read Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. It was never assigned, and I never felt compelled to pick it up. And honestly, even after reading James, I still don’t feel a pull to read it—I know enough about the original to understand its premise. What I did enjoy, deeply, was experiencing this story entirely from James’s point of view.
James offers a powerful reimagining of enslaved Africans—both the brutality of their circumstances and the interior lives that history and literature have often ignored. Everett gives us James’s urgent journey to escape being sold while holding onto the hope of freeing his wife and child. His longing to see them again, to see them free, is what carries him through every danger.
This book doesn’t shy away from highlighting racism and slavery, but it also explores freedom—not just physical, but psychological. It shows how freedom can begin in the mind, in the act of reclaiming one’s voice and agency. Everett presents Jim (here, James) as an intellectually brilliant, emotionally rich, self-aware man who hides his intelligence to survive. He is no caricature. He is no stereotype. He is fully human.
Everett reshapes Jim completely—not as the limited, often simplistic figure associated with Twain’s version, but as a literate, strategic, linguistically gifted man who uses code-switching to navigate a world built to harm him. Around white people, he performs a restricted dialect because it keeps him alive.
As someone who grew up code-switching, that hit me. It’s wild how normalized hiding parts of ourselves has become, how much it is tied to safety and survival. Even as James forms a bond with Huck, he still has to manage Huck’s perception of him. One wrong move could mean death. And still, he risks everything.
What Everett does here is more than a retelling—it’s a reclamation. He exposes the national mythology America built around race and reveals the psychological strategies enslaved people used to survive within white violence. He gives Jim real agency, especially in an ending that feels far bolder, more visceral, and more empowering than what Twain wrote—or perhaps what he ever intended.
Freedom in James isn’t just the absence of chains. It’s psychological. Linguistic. Familial. Bodily. Social. Everett allows us to witness the full complexity of James’s inner world in a way Twain never could—or perhaps never sought to.
For me, James challenges the white literary canon, restores humanity to a character who was denied it, and interrogates America’s deep-rooted myths about race.
This book can be read—maybe intentionally—as both homage and critique.
Ultimately, James is the kind of novel that lingers. It asks you to reconsider the stories you thought you knew and the voices that were never allowed to speak for themselves. It’s sharp, fearless, and emotionally resonant—a book that expands the conversation rather than simply responding to it. I’m grateful I read it.
Excellent read.
This book is a powerful and important retelling of Mark Twain’s classic novel, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It tells the story of Jim, the enslaved man, from his own perspective, giving him a rich and fully realized voice. The book is praised for its ability to capture the brutality of slavery with dark humor and harrowing realism, while also exploring complex themes of survival, identity, language, and resistance. It’s a compelling and important work of American fiction that has been widely recognized and acclaimed.
El autor estadounidense es un maestro en el manejo del lenguaje, la comicidad en sus obras, en la reconstrucción del paisaje cultural, en describir situaciones sensibles, en la creación de personajes con mucha profundidad sicológica y, sobre todo, en pintar la conciencia de las diferencias raciales que han dividido por siempre la nación americana. Estos elementos están todos presentes en esta re escritura de Las aventuras de Huckleberry Finn (1884) de Mark Twain, pero, desde la perspectiva del esclavo Jim.
La historia de un esclavo negro que escapa por el miedo de ser vendido por parte de su dueña y de ser separado de su esposa e hija es el hilo conductor de la novela. Huckleberry, un niño blanco de trece años, que también escapa de las garras de un padre maltratador, se encuentra en el camino con Jim, el esclavo. Juntos viajan por el río Missipippi, al igual que en la novela de Twain, hacia el Sur, en dirección contraria al Norte en donde el esclavo podría eventualmente encontrar la libertad y regresar para comprar a su familia. Al final ambos regresan y enfrentan diferentes situaciones que se alejan de la novela de Twain de una manera muy original.
En esencia la trama es similar, pero el punto de vista del esclavo, que sabe leer y escribe esta historia en primera persona, y la mirada contemporánea hacen que sea una novela fundamentalmente diferente a la de Twain, muy entretenida y dinámica. Muy recomendada.
thenextgoodbook.com
What’s it about?
This is a reimagining of Huck Finn and Jim’s story.
What did it make me think about?
How much our expectations of people tend to color our view of them.
Should I read it?
This was a very well-written story about Huck Finn and the character of Jim. It centers on what we expect from those around us. Percival Everett gives us a new version of the character Jim. A version where Jim understands and utilizes the power of expectations. I enjoyed it.
Quote-
“Why on earth, would you think that I can’t imagine the trouble I’m in? After you tortured me and eviscerated me and emasculated me and left me to burn slowly to death, is there something else you’ll do to me? Tell me, Judge Thatcher, what is there that I can’t imagine?”
“ I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.”
What’s it about?
This is a reimagining of Huck Finn and Jim’s story.
What did it make me think about?
How much our expectations of people tend to color our view of them.
Should I read it?
This was a very well-written story about Huck Finn and the character of Jim. It centers on what we expect from those around us. Percival Everett gives us a new version of the character Jim. A version where Jim understands and utilizes the power of expectations. I enjoyed it.
Quote-
“Why on earth, would you think that I can’t imagine the trouble I’m in? After you tortured me and eviscerated me and emasculated me and left me to burn slowly to death, is there something else you’ll do to me? Tell me, Judge Thatcher, what is there that I can’t imagine?”
“ I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.”
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