James. Percival Everett

Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize Winner of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize James is a brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: charming, funny, tragic, at times terrifying – and told in the voice of slave Jim. When Jim learns that he is about to be sold to a new master in New Orleans, forever separated from his wife and daughter, he decides to hide out on Jackson’s Island in the Mississippi until he can devise an escape plan with his family. Meanwhile, Huck Finn fakes his own death to escape his cruel father, who has recently returned to town. All this is familiar to Mark Twain’s readers, and this is where the heroes begin their extremely dangerous rafting journey down the Mississippi River to the states free from slavery. Many elements of the plot of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are preserved here, but Jim's inner freedom, intelligence and capacity for empathy are shown in a radically new light, with brilliant humor, depth and real drama. This novel became a real event in the United States, and is already considered one of the best books in American literature of the twenty-first century.