Percival Everett: James

Revered American novelist Percival Everett discusses his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James, a bold and transformative response to Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.


In his reimagining of an American classic, Percival Everett flips the script on Mark Twain’s Huck Finn, placing Huck’s enslaved companion Jim – here renamed James – at the centre of the narrative and granting him the voice he’s been long denied. The resulting novel is gripping, funny and strikingly relevant: a sharp reckoning with American identity, the dehumanising legacy of slavery and the enduring absurdity of racial supremacy.


In this special event, Everett joins host Osman Faruqi to discuss what drew him to this act of literary reclamation and why he views his work as being in conversation with Twain’s. He will also reflect on his decades-spanning literary career and the recent adaptation of his novel Erasure into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.


Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from one of the most inventive and incisive voices in contemporary American literature in Everett’s only Melbourne appearance.


Presented in partnership with University of Melbourne Arts and Culture

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