Description

‘American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New Yorker

Craig Suder, third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, is in a slump. His batting average is shocking, his marriage somehow worse, and he secretly fears he’s inherited his mother’s insanity. Ordered to take a midseason rest, Suder instead takes his LP of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and flees.

A dazzling tale of madness, confinement and the need for escape, Suder introduced Percival Everett to the world as a writer already fully capable of conjuring whole lives and worlds on the page.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

Read Percival’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.

Publisher Review

A mad work of comic genius, combining symbols and myths from ancients and moderns, white culture and black, juxtaposing heartbreaks with farce to make up a narrative that has never, never been told before * The Los Angeles Times Book Review * [A] marvellous first novel * The New York Times Book Review * Very funny - sometimes excruciatingly so * Publishers Weekly * Who could meld baseball and jazz with the most wistful male myth of all - the Icarus myth -remembering that Daedalus really did do it: He flew * The Los Angeles Times Book Review * American literature's philosopher king - and its sharpest satirist * The New Yorker * Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy * The New York Times *