February 12, 2022
As we continue into Black History Month, we are treated to Marlon James’s second episode in his Dark Star trilogy, as well as uncollected work from Zora Neale Hurston. In addition are three books that challenge the form of the novel as we know it. Be ready for your mind to expand with these splendid pieces of writing.
Happy reading,
Melanie Fleishman
Buyer, The Center for Fiction Bookstore
Featured Books
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Moon Witch, Spider King
By MARLON JAMES
Published by RIVERHEAD
In the follow up to James’s Booker Prize finalist novel Black Leopard, Red Wolf, we get to see this mythical African world through the eyes of Sogolon, the 177-year-old Moon Witch, one of the three main characters in the Dark Star Trilogy (along with Tracker and the missing Boy they both seek). This installment gives our heroine her own voice, while also telling the story of the dying king’s chancellor with whom she battles. Myth combines with African history into a powerfully dramatic invented world from the mind of this talented writer.
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You Don't Know Us Negroes
By ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Published by AMISTAD
Introduced and Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Genevieve West
Hurston, the beloved writer most well known for Their Eyes Were Watching God, was also an anthropologist and a prolific narrative nonfiction writer. Here, collected for the first time are her essays organized by theme—race, gender, etc. —comprising thirty years of observation as she developed into one of the most important writers of the Harlem Renaissance. The collection includes her celebrated piece, “How it Feels to be Colored Me” from 1928: “Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.” How indeed?
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Pure Colour
By SHEILA HETI
Published by FSG
In Heti’s mystical new fiction the world is made up of fish, birds and bears. Mina (a fish) deeply loves her father (a bear) who promises to give her the gift of pure colour—a tangible thing that reveals the beauty of God’s “first draft.” This novel is a prequel creation myth rather than a fantasy set in the future and recalls the recent philosophical fiction of writers like Joy Williams. When Mina’s father passes, their souls entwine, and they become a leaf on a tree. An odd but fascinating allegory: Be patient and go with it. Your time will be rewarded.
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The Pages
By HUGO HAMILTON
Published by KNOPF
The Pages has an incredibly clever and ambitious conceit: the narrator is a book telling its own story. The book in question is Austrian writer Joseph Roth’s classic novel Rebellion which was almost burned during the Nazi regime. You don’t have to have read Rebellion to appreciate this entirely engaging piece of fiction. A story of Germany as it descends into darkness under the Nazis with a combination of real and historical figures, and a present-day young woman who is in possession of the original smuggled copy. It is a relevant fable of censorship and brutality that ties the past to the present.
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Ulysses
By JAMES JOYCE
Published by OTHER PRESS
Illustrated by Eduardo Arroyo
It’s fitting to end with another work almost lost to censorship—a ravishing new edition of Ulysses which is enhanced with beautiful paintings, drawings and collages by an acclaimed Spanish artist. As the novel was banned in 1921 for being obscene, one wonders how far we have come given the recent news from Texas libraries and the lists of classic books that have been requested to be taken off the shelves. One hundred years later, Ulysses continues to enthrall, excite, challenge and delight readers worldwide. This is a perfect keepsake or gift to remind us of its importance in the pantheon of literature.