Friday Black

(Paperback)

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Description

The instant New York Times bestseller

'An unbelievable debut' New York Times

Racism, but "managed" through virtual reality

Black Friday, except you die in a bargain-crazed throng

Happiness, but pharmacological

Love, despite everything

A Publisher's Weekly Most Anticipated Book for Fall 2018

FRIDAY BLACK tackles urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explores the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In the first, unforgettable story of this collection, THE FINKELSTEIN FIVE, Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unstinting reckoning of the brutal prejudice of the US justice system. In ZIMMER LAND we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And FRIDAY BLACK and HOW TO SELL A JACKET AS TOLD BY ICE KING show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

Fresh, exciting, vital and contemporary, FRIDAY BLACK will appeal to people who love Colson Whitehead's UNDERGROUND RAILROAD, the TV show BLACK MIRROR, the work of Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders, and anyone looking for stories that speak to the world we live in now.

'An excitement and a wonder' George Saunders

'The writing in this outstanding collection will make you hurt and demand your hope' Roxane Gay

'The fiction debut of the year. Bravo young man. We await your encore' Mary Karr

Reviews

The short story collection Friday Black is a late contender for my book of the year. Brilliantly terrifying speculative short stories about consumerism, race and dads.

A surreal, startling debut collection . . . where everyday storylines are pushed, as in episodes of Black Mirror, to darkly funny extremes . . . Composed with brio and rare imaginative power, Friday Black recaptures the strange fear and excitement we first feel as child readers, when we begin to learn that Grimms' fairytales are approximations of the real world. - Guardian

These stories are an excitement and a wonder: strange, crazed, urgent and funny, yet classical in the way they take on stubborn human problems: the depravities of capitalism, love struggling to assert itself within heartless systems. The wildly talented Adjei-Brenyah has made these edgy tales immensely charming via his resolute, heartful, immensely likeable narrators, capable of seeing the world as blessed and cursed at once - George Saunders

The edge of the stories in Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's debut collection FRIDAY BLACK is razor sharp, ready to cut deep. This book is dark, captivating and essential. This books is a call to arms and it is a condemnation. Adjei-Brenyah offers powerful prose as parable. The writing in this outstanding collection will make you hurt and demand your hope. Read this book. Marvel at the intelligence of each of these stories and what they reveal about racism, capitalism, complacency and their insidious reach - Roxane Gay

For literature to bring forth such an astonishing new voice as Nana K. Adjei-Brenyah's - tender and furious, wise and wise-assed - marks a major leap forward for us all. The very first story brought me to tears, putting me in mind of Babel or Chekhov. And Adjei-Brenyah keeps doing that - dragging you through dystopic muck and mire before landing you in a transcendent spiritual place. This is the fiction debut of the year and I can't cheer it loudly enough. Bravo young man. We await your encore. - Mary Karr

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah has written an exciting, dazzling collection of stories. He writes with a ferocious wit and a big heart. His inventive fictional worlds speak both directly and covertly to this political moment in unexpected and fresh ways. Friday Black marks the thrilling debut of an important new voice in fiction. - Dana Spiotta

Author Bio

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is from Spring Valley, New York. He graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University.