Description
Book Synopsis⭐ NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND OPRAH''S BOOK CLUB PICK
⭐ CHOSEN BY BARACK OBAMA AS A FAVOURITE READ
⭐ TOP TEN BOOKS OF THE YEAR, NEW YORK TIMES & WASHINGTON POST
''Brilliantly imagined, larger than life, a tragicomedic epic of intertwined lives.'' JOYCE CAROL OATES
''Deeply felt, beautifully written and profoundly humane.'' JUNOT DIAZ, New York Times Book Review
The year is 1969. In a housing project in south Brooklyn, a shambling old church deacon called Sportcoat shoots - for no apparent reason - the local drug-dealer who used to be part of the church''s baseball team. The repercussions of that moment draw in the whole community, from Sportcoat''s best friend - Hot Sausage - to the local Italian mobsters, the police (corrupt and otherwise), and the stalwart ladies of the Five Ends Baptist Church.
DEACON KING KONG is a book about a community under threat, about the
Trade Review
The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong commands awe...And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy. * NEW YORKER *
Deacon King Kong is full of heart, humor, and compassion...I say we give him another National Book Award for this one. It's that good. * NPR *
Deacon King Kong reaffirms James McBride's position among the greatest American storytellers of our time. * BOOKPAGE *
Hilarious...A rich and vivid multicultural history. * TIME *
Perhaps you wouldn't expect your next great read to be a sort of comic opera set in a Brooklyn housing project circa 1969 starring a drink-addled church deacon named Sportcoat, his best friend Hot Sausage and a melancholic amateur gardener with mafia ties known as the Elephant. Best put on your seat belt, because McBride (The Good Lord Bird, Five-Carat Soul) will take you on a fast, funny, farcical ride. * WASHINGTON POST *
McBride is operating in the realm of social allegory, a lineage that extends back through generations of writers: Ralph Ellison, Terry Southern, Darius James. Like them, he telegraphs his intentions through the use — or better yet, the reinvention — of history, which as Deacon King Kong progresses becomes a kind of floating opera, touching but not always overlapping with events as they occurred. * LA TIMES *
Deacon King Kong cements McBride as a master storyteller. * SHELF AWARENESS *
Dazzling, spiritually rich. * OPRAH magazine *
Peopled with wondrously quirky and charismatic individuals...both hilarious and affecting, the patter a treat, and in wise, drunk, old Sportcoat James McBride has given us a character for the ages. * BIG ISSUE *
