This satirical, Booker-shortlisted tale flips the script on Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the children’s novel published in 1884 and set in Mississippi that went on to become a toxic cornerstone of the American canon. Where Twain had teenage Huck as his narrator, in James, Percival Everett reimagines the story from the perspective of his friend and fellow runaway Jim, an enslaved Black man who opens the book with the line: “Those little bastards were hiding out there in the tall grass.”
The little bastards in question are Huck and his pal Tom Sawyer, who want to play a trick on Jim while he sleeps. He is alert to the boys’ games but plays along because, as he has learned from experience: “It always pays to give white folks what they want.” When our protagonist learns he is to be sold downriver and separated from his family, he hides on nearby Jackson Island while he comes up with a plan. There he is joined by Huck, who is trying to escape his abusive father.
