As Trump\u2019s America prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence in 2026 \u2014 at the cost of a sweeping whitewash of its history \u2014 Huckleberry Finn returns to the spotlight in a new light. Novelist Percival Everett seizes Mark Twain\u2019s foundational tale and \u201crecenters\u201d it: in James, he tells, in the first person, the story of Jim, the enslaved man who is Huck\u2019s companion. A masterstroke, crowned by the 2024 National Book Award and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize, James opens a window onto an America long obscured in Twain\u2019s work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One hundred and sixty years after the abolition of slavery, this subversive tale asks: what if \u201cBlack\u201d and \u201cwhite,\u201d in the great maelstrom of ancestral mixing, no longer meant anything at all ? What if it all came down to social labels ? Retracing Huck and Jim\u2013James\u2019s 1,200-km journey down the Mississippi, Everett plunges us into America\u2019s shadow zones, cutting against the tide of history on the march.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"menu_order":94,"template":"","productioncategory":[18],"yoast_head":"\n