Everett uses comedy and horror to shine a light on America’s shameful past of lynching and racism in his latest Booker-shortlisted novel.

In the town of Money, Mississippi, the local police (portrayed as bumbling racist rednecks) are baffled when the same Black corpse is found at the site of two identically gruesome murders. Somehow the corpse evades police and the morgue to make its way to a growing number of murders.

Two Black special detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, are hilarious when they take charge of the case, resulting in resentment from the locals.

Everett does not pull punches. The murders are shockingly gruesome, the violence graphic, perhaps portraying the same sickening violence and injustice of the lynchings.

Satire can be such a powerful tool. As you read along smiling, laughing, you are also apalled at the horrible dark side of America’s history. The racism and lynchings compared to a slow genocide. Less than one percent of lynchers were convicted of a crime. Of this percentage most never served time in prison.

The lynchings, made a federal hate crime this year, have stopped, and the ‘N’ word is slowly dissolving from the American lexicon. Everett makes the reader consider if racism will ever be eradicated in a culture of violence. Guns and hatred threaten, like a volcano, to erupt into a race war at any given moment. What is the answer? Is there an answer?

Novels such as this are vital. Shining a light, raising awareness, revealing the darkness of the past. Knowledge is power. Knowledge can bring about change. A brilliant novel with a powerful message.

Reviewed by Neale Lucas

AWARDS

• Shortlisted, Booker Prize, United Kingdom, 2022
• Winner, Fiction, Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, United States, 2022
• Winner, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, United Kingdom, 2022

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Percival Everett is the author of more than thirty books. His novel Telephone was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and he received the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Awards. He teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.