James is a reimagining of 'Adventures of Huckleberry Finn' where the fugitive slave Jim is the narrator. It won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
James is a slave and lives with his wife and daughter on a white man's farm. He hides the fact that he can read and write and has opinions and thoughts, and behaves like a dumb slave. He has a friend in Huckleberry Finn, a young kid with an abusive father. When James realises his owner wants to sell him off mins his family, he runs away. In his running away he meets Huckleberry Finn and they travel down the Mississippi meeting interesting people out to exploit them - a couple of con men, Huckleberry's father who dies (Jim later reveals that he is in fact Huck's father), a music band which hires Jim as a tenor (funnily they are whites posing as blacks) and so on. Sold by his friend to a white man, Jim helps a young girl escape, only to see her die, decides enough is enough, kills the slave owner, frees all the salves, goes back to his farm and frees his wife and daughter.
It's very well written and one can see how well Jim tries to disguise his erudition, his knowledge and bargains it for peace until he is pushed too far. Enjoyed reading it.
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