This is a revisiting of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. The more correct answer is, it’s the story of Jim Huck’s slave companion throughout Twain’s novel. How Huck and Jim are not together throughout that novel. And so things happened to Jim away from Huck. To say that it’s a retelling is not precise. To say that it’s a reimagining is not quite correct. It’s finally an opportunity for Jim to be present in the story. I had read [The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn] first, as a kid. And it didn’t come to me really until just a couple of years ago, shortly before I started this novel, I thought: Jim needs to speak.
― Percival Everett, Interview
What booksellers are saying about James
- A necessary look into the life of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’s Jim, or James, told with Percival Everett’s unflinching, poetic, and entertaining prose. The story gives insight into the titular character’s perspective while also serving as a damning look at the deep-seated racial injustices of slavery and the way marginalized characters are portrayed in American fiction. The pages fly by, leading to a triumphant finale that is as impactful as anything I’ve read in years..
― James Harrod, Malaprop’s in
Asheville, North Carolina| BUY
- Before reading this novel I went back and re-read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Since it had been close to 40 years since I read the book, I was glad that I did because not only had I forgotten much of the story but after reading the synopsis of James, I read it with a different viewpoint. James starts out closely following the story in Huck but about half way through veers off. I thought this was a powerful and thought provoking story and i expect it to be one of the most critically acclaimed books of the year.
― Kathy Clemmons, Sundog Books in Santa Rosa, Florida | BUY
- A young boy and an enslaved man escape together and travel the river together on a raft. Sound familiar? This book lovingly reimagines Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn from the view of Jim, who in this version becomes James as he and Huck get a second chance at life. Thought provoking, full of adventure, and thoroughly original!
― Patience Allan-Glick, Hills & Hamlets Bookshop / Underground Books
Carrollton, Georgia | BUY
About Percival Everett
Percival Everett is a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. His most recent books include Dr. No (finalist for the NBCC Award for Fiction and winner of the PEN/ Jean Stein Book Award), The Trees (finalist for the Booker Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction), Telephone (finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), So Much Blue, Erasure, and I Am Not Sidney Poitier. He has received the NBCC Ivan Sandrof Life Achievement Award and The Windham Campbell Prize from Yale University. American Fiction, the feature film based on his novel Erasure, was released in 2023. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, the writer Danzy Senna, and their children
“I had what feels to me like a bizarre, non-linear experience in the movie business. I was never a part of any union, and worked all kinds of non-union assisting jobs to finance my own projects, which had small crews and shot on film in a very guerilla fashion. I didn’t go to film school, so everything I learned about telling stories in that way came from asking a lot of questions of crew members on various sets, watching a lot of movies and interviews, and making things up as I went along.”
