Description

The humorous and heart-wrenching story of a woman’s re-entry into life on the outside after twenty years in incarceration, told over one whirlwind Fourth of July weekend.

“There’s no one quite like Carlotta Mercedes, the transgender Black Colombian heroine – no, star – of the second novel by Hannaham.”

-THE OBSERVER

When Carlotta Mercedes was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she was born with. But not long after her conviction, she began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards.

Over twenty years later, Carlotta is granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed Brooklyn, where she struggles to reconcile with a family reluctant to accept her identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.

Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta sweeps the reader through seemingly every street of Brooklyn, much as Joyce’s Ulysses does through Dublin. Hannaham introduces a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a society and prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.

Publisher Review

"Carlotta is irrepressible. Don't let the title of this wondrous novel fool you. Hannaham cares deeply about Carlotta." * JOHN IRVING, THE NEW YORK TIMES * "Carlotta is more than one to remember, she's a treasure." * Paul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout * "As if by means of some mashup of Hubert Selby, Darius James, and Bruce Wagner, Hannaham's tripwire provocations and dazzling verbal fireworks give way to a fathomless tenderness and remorse. His Carlotta is spectacularly Brooklyn and devastatingly human all the way down to the bone." * Jonatham Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn * "An exuberant odyssey. In James Hannaham's breakneck novel, a trans woman returns from prison to a New York she barely recognises... Carlotta's passion for life is unstoppable... [Her] charm and zest allows the reader at times to forget the horrors she has lived through." * The Guardian * "There's no one quite like Carlotta Mercedes, the transgender Black Colombian heroine - no, star - of the second novel by James Hannaham." * The Observer * "James Hannaham's dazzling Didn't Nobody Give a S*** What Happened to Carlotta deserves its place on the radar. The main character is a trans woman and the sexual politics are sharp. Carlotta Mercedes, released from jail after 20 years, is a protagonist with an outspoken voice." * The Independent * "The profanity and slang of James Hannaham's novel gives it a fresh voice and humour, despite its serious concerns." * Financial Times * "The overall effect is a novel that feels utterly alive in your hands, its prose humming and buzzing, demanding you to read it in as few chunks as possible." * The Big Issue * "An utterly original story with an unforgettable protagonist - Carlotta Mercedes, nee Dustin Chambers - James Hannaham's unique writing style allows the reader to enter her mind." * Buzz Magazine * "Hannaham's latest novel is at once irreverently funny and devastatingly sad, a quixotic tale about the queerness of missed time; how, for the most marginalized, the shackles of the past and uncertain promises of the future make dwelling in the present seem impossible." * Michelle Hart, author of We Do What we Do in the Dark * "Borne along by a riotous current of verbal ingenuity, James Hannaham's new novel is-like its endlessly vibrant protagonist-a marvel of invention. There wasn't a page that didn't surprise me. By its end, this book had conjured a depth of identification with its heroine that I was not prepared for. Utterly brilliant." * Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winner for Homeland Elegies * "Maybe the comic novel is the best way to explore some of the least funny aspects of our society. Maybe the justice system is so immoral, the forces of capitalism so relentless, the treatment of some of our citizens so indefensible, that we have no choice but to turn heartbreak into hilarity, to laugh. Carlotta is a beautiful, unsettling book. The title is a trick; James Hannaham gives a shit, and so should everyone else." * Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind * "James Hannaham's Carlotta is an astonishing act of empathy and identification, which will shake readers out of their torpor and remind them that fiction at its highest is a form of metempsychosis. Carlotta steps off the page and into your room, and stands there, implacable, educating you on her terms." * Lucy Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York * "An early contender for best title of the year." * Literary Hub * "A writer of major importance." * New York Times Book Review * "As a creative dynamo, Hannaham is the real deal . . . Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is his most tender and tenacious novel yet, with the ear, soul, mouth, and swagger of a real New Yorker." * Interview Magazine * "Razor-sharp....James Hannaham's Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta deftly blends the novelist's two modes: wicked satire and fiction in conversation with the classics." * Los Angeles Times (finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize) * "Irreverently funny and devastatingly sad, a quixotic tale about the queerness of missed time." * Electric Lit * "Carlotta is a vision to behold as she attempts reentry into a now-unfamiliar world. In Hannaham's hands, this theme shimmers with humor, pathos, and that kind of queer energy that readers love." * Edge Media * "Superb... Carlotta deserves a lot of things society rarely provides to women like her-among them, a role in great fiction. Hannaham gives Carlotta her due. A brash, ambitious novel carried by an unforgettable narrator." * Kirkus Reviews (starred) * "A completely unforgettable, original, and singular novel by a brave, exciting new writer." * Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage (on Delicious Foods) * "Hilarious and heartbreaking, with language that reaches for your throat." * The Atlantic * "[Hannaham] is serious about investigating the long-term effects of internalized racism, and the despair that prevents people from helping themselves... A sharp critique of the American belief that you can do anything as long as you work hard." * Entertainment Weekly * "Angry, saucy and joyful, Carlotta is a true survivor - one whose story shines a disinfecting light on the injustices of our world." * Esquire * "Hannaham is not only creative or stunningly gifted or intellectual or supremely original, but all those distinctions at once." * The Washington Post * "[Carlotta] the bold, brash, and bitingly hilarious protagonist, seeks to come to terms with the Fort Greene, Brooklyn that she left behind. Hannaham's novel has drawn comparisons to Ulysses with its style, specificity, and snapshot framing." * Time * "This bawdy, angry tour de force is told in the inimitable voice of Carlotta, a trans woman just out of prison after a 20-year stint, back in Brooklyn and looking to transform her life just as she transformed her self. Hannaham's fearless novel makes a sharp argument about incarceration and poverty in America in a voice that fizzes with attitude and invention. And he nails the ending." * Slate * "Makes you feel like you're at a party from the minute you open the front pages... It's manic and colorful and riotous and filled with energy...I love James Hannaham's writing." * NPR * "Searing and often hilarious." * New York Magazine * "Hannaham's stimulating work moves like a plane in tailspin, tossing off flashes of wisdom as the ground below gets ever closer. It's a ride worth taking." * Publisher's Weekly * "Hannaham has created a gloriously original character with an unmistakable voice and an unforgettable story... Carlotta's journey from Ithaca, carrying her talisman, antagonizing a one-eyed man, and plunging into a drug-induced fever dream while seeking a lost son, echoes another linguistically brilliant novel, James Joyce's Ulysses." * Booklist (starred review) * "James Hannaham's new novel is a tour de force. Gripping, haunting, and deeply moving, it beguiles the reader with the urgent immediacy of its characters' lives, while also reverberating with universal themes of freedom and enslavement, love and survival." * Jennifer Egan (on Delicious Foods) * "Hannaham's prose is gloriously dense and full of elegant observations that might go unmade by a lesser writer. He creates full-bodied characters. Even the minor figures are drawn with subtle details." * Roxane Gay (on Delicious Foods) * "Hannaham's virtues as a novelist are many. He is not only masterful at voice, but at creating compelling characters and enthralling swiftly paced plots. Despite tackling heavy topics, there's humor and playfulness in his prose. But Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is more than a page-turner, it says something we all need to hear." * Southern Review of Books * "A remarkable novel...the hilarity, the sharpness, and the wild lyricism of Hannaham's Delicious Foods resurface in Carlotta, along with an interest in racism, community, family, love, the possibilities of language, and the preciousness of the freedom to be who you are." * Francine Prose, The New York Review of Books * "We were big fans of James Hannaham's previous novel Delicious Foods... The long wait for his follow-up is finally over and it's a doozy: a raucous social comedy that takes on our carceral system, the poor treatment of trans people, and capitalist failings in one unmissable package." * Chicago Review of Books * "The title of the James Hannaham's latest novel is ironic, because one would need to be both inhuman and immune to stylistic brilliance to be able to spend any time in Carlotta Mercedes' world without starting to care deeply about the protagonist of Didn't Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta." * CyprusMail *