Unclay is unlike anything I've ever read before. The language is original and fresh and rich and the milieu of the book a place that is our earth, but then again not. There's a magic undercurrent to the story that makes it a pure delight.
New Directions is proud to present one of the most spellbinding novels you will read this year, and certainly the weirdest.
First published in 1931, Unclay glows with an unworldly light-Death has come to the small village of Dodder to deliver a parchment with the names of two local mortals and the fatal word unclay upon it. When he loses the precious sheet, he is at a loss, and also free of his errand. Hungry to taste the sweet fruits of human life, Mr. John Death, as he is now known, takes a holiday in Dorsetshire and rests from his…
I only discovered Percival Everett last year and I’m now trying to catch up and read everything. He’s one of our finest and most versatile writers, and this new one is one of his best. Witty, wise, joyful, painful, important, and highly readable. I predict this will finally win him the Pulitzer.
'Truly extraordinary books are rare, and this is one of them' - Roddy Doyle, Booker Prize-winning author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha
James by Percival Everett is a profound and ferociously funny meditation on identity, belonging and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love, which reimagines The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. From the author of The Trees, shortlisted for the Booker Prize, and Erasure, adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction.
The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new…
Richard Powers writes books that are both entertaining and important. He comes to bring us a sense of wonder. In Playground he does for oceans what he did for forests in The Overstory. He takes four disparate lives and tells their stories, which tie together in a breathtaking and perfectly timed dance of science, humanity and awe. He does what only the truest artists can do: he makes you see the world anew.
A magisterial new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory and Bewilderment.
Four lives are drawn together in a sweeping, panoramic new novel from Richard Powers, showcasing the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Overstory at the height of his skills. Twelve-year-old Evie Beaulieu sinks to the bottom of a swimming pool in Montreal strapped to one of the world’s first aqualungs. Ina Aroita grows up on naval bases across the Pacific with art as her only home. Two polar opposites at an elite Chicago high school bond over a three-thousand-year-old board game; Rafi Young will get lost in literature, while…
Selected stories from Corey Mesler, who has been praised by Amy Greene, Alexander Theroux, and Richard Bausch. The foreword comes from Steve Stern, who writes, "To my mind, the essential quality of Corey's project is its joyousness. His voice takes its place among the playful company of writers such as Vonnegut, Brautigan, George Saunders, perhaps Laurence Sterne, writers whose antic imaginations refuse to leave base reality alone, and are compelled to distill it through the alchemy of language into something both rollicking and sublime."
