Book description
BOOKER PRIZE FINALIST • Based on a true event, this novel is “a blues song cut straight from the heart ... about the unjust death of an innocent Black man caught up in a corrupt system” (Walter Mosley, best-selling author of Devil in a Blue Dress).
In Cardiff, Wales in…
Why read it?
1 author picked The Fortune Men as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This brilliant piece of nonfiction novel writing made me think hard about my own work. Nadifa Mohamed is a Somali-born British writer, and the story of Mahmood Hussein Mattan, who was wrongly hanged in 1950s Cardiff.
Mohamed’s own father knew Mahmood, and as a writer, she explores wonderfully, if graphically, what Cardiff was like for migrants back then. She reminded me to focus on the “small” people in life, those dispossessed as well as those who look out for such people. Her work is also a reminder that the world is a cross-cultural place and that our own characters do…
From Brian's list on The best crime novels to help us understand other cultures.
If you love The Fortune Men...
December on 5C4
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
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