WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020

Winner of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction 2020

Time #1 Novel of the Year 2019

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Author of The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead brilliantly dramatizes another strand of American history through the story of two boys sentenced to a hellish reform school in 1960s Florida.

Elwood Curtis has taken the words of Dr Martin Luther King to heart: he is as good as anyone. Abandoned by his parents, brought up by his loving, strict and clear-sighted grandmother, Elwood is about to enroll in the local black college. But given the time and the place, one innocent mistake is enough to destroy his future, and so Elwood arrives at The Nickel Academy, which claims to provide 'physical, intellectual and moral training' which will equip its inmates to become 'honorable and honest men'.

In reality, the Nickel Academy is a chamber of horrors, where physical, emotional and sexual abuse is rife, where corrupt officials and tradesmen do a brisk trade in supplies intended for the school, and where any boy who resists is likely to disappear 'out back'. Stunned to find himself in this vicious environment, Elwood tries to hold on to Dr King's ringing assertion, 'Throw us in jail, and we will still love you.' But Elwood's fellow inmate and new friend Turner thinks Elwood is naive and worse; the world is crooked, and the only way to survive is to emulate the cruelty and cynicism of their oppressors.

The tension between Elwood's idealism and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision which will have decades-long repercussions.

Based on the history of a real reform school in Florida that operated for one hundred and eleven years and warped and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative by a great American novelist whose work is essential to understanding the current reality of the United States.

'If greatness is excellence sustained over time, then without question, Whitehead is one of the greatest of his generation. In fact, figuring his age, acclaim, productivity and consistency, he is one of the greatest American writers alive' Time

'A commanding triumph' Sunday Times

'Every chapter hits its mark' New York Times

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017

WINNER OF THE ARTHUR C. CLARKE AWARD 2017

LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER 2016

AMAZON.COM #1 BOOK OF THE YEAR 2016

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

'Whitehead is on a roll: the reviews have been sublime' Guardian

'Luminous, furious, wildly inventive' Observer

'Hands down one of the best, if not the best, book I've read this year' Stylist

'Dazzling' New York Review of Books


Praised by Barack Obama and an Oprah Book Club Pick, The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead won the National Book Award 2016 and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2017.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can. Cora and Caesar's first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But its placid surface masks an infernal scheme designed for its unknowing black inhabitants. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher sent to find Cora, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

At each stop on her journey, Cora encounters a different world. As Whitehead brilliantly recreates the unique terrors for black people in the pre-Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America, from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once the story of one woman's ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shatteringly powerful meditation on history.

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (Now a major Amazon Prime TV show)

'Dazzling' Guardian

'Gloriously entertaining' Evening Standard

'A rich, wild book' New York Times

'Ray Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked...'

To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child, and if her parents on Striver's Row don't approve of him or their cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it's still home.

Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks that are getting bigger and bigger all the time.

See, cash is tight, especially with all those instalment plan sofas, so if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace at the furniture store, Ray doesn't see the need to ask where it comes from. He knows a discreet jeweller downtown who also doesn't ask questions.

Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa - the 'Waldorf of Harlem' - and volunteers Ray's services as the fence. The heist doesn't go as planned; they rarely do, after all. Now Ray has to cater to a new clientele, one made up of shady cops on the take, vicious minions of the local crime lord, and numerous other Harlem lowlifes.

Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he starts to see the truth about who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home furniture needs?

Harlem Shuffle is driven by an ingeniously intricate plot that plays out in a beautifully recreated Harlem of the early 1960s. It's a family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to Harlem.

In a dazzlingly original work of non-fiction, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of The Underground Railroad recreates the exuberance, the chaos, the promise, and the heartbreak of New York. Here is a literary love song that will entrance anyone who has lived in - or spent time - in the greatest of American cities.

A masterful evocation of the city that never sleeps, The Colossus of New York captures the city's inner and outer landscapes in a series of vignettes, meditations, and personal memories. Colson Whitehead conveys with almost uncanny immediacy the feelings and thoughts of longtime residents and of newcomers who dream of making it their home; of those who have conquered its challenges; and of those who struggle against its cruelties.

Whitehead's style is as multilayered and multifarious as New York itself: Switching from third person, to first person, to second person, he weaves individual voices into a jazzy musical composition that perfectly reflects the way we experience the city. There is a funny, knowing riff on what it feels like to arrive in New York for the first time; a lyrical meditation on how the city is transformed by an unexpected rain shower; and a wry look at the ferocious battle that is commuting. The plaintive notes of the lonely and dispossessed resound in one passage, while another captures those magical moments when the city seems to be talking directly to you, inviting you to become one with its rhythms.

The Colossus of New York is a remarkable portrait of life in the big city. Ambitious in scope, gemlike in its details, it is at once an unparalleled tribute to New York and the ideal introduction to one of the most exciting writers working today.

From the author of the Man Booker longlisted The Underground Railroad

A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. The worst of the plague is now past, and Manhattan is slowly being resettled. Armed forces have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street – aka ‘Zone One’ and teams of civilian volunteers are clearing out the remaining infected ‘stragglers’.

Mark Spitz is a member of one of these taskforces and over three surreal days he undertakes the mundane mission of malfunctioning zombie removal, the rigours of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder, and attempting to come to terms with a fallen world.

But then things start to go terribly wrong…

This New York Times Notable Book from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Underground Railroad is a brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry.

The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers; and the town's aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant.

And, it turns out, the consultant needs them. But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, the name is everything and our hero's efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well.

Verticality, architectural and social, is at the heart of Colson Whitehead's first novel that takes place in an unnamed high-rise city that combines twenty-first-century engineering feats with nineteenth-century pork-barrel politics. Elevators are the technological expression of the vertical ideal, and Lila Mae Watson, the city's first black female elevator inspector, is its embattled token of upward mobility.When Number Eleven of the newly completed Fanny Briggs Memorial Building goes into deadly free-fall just hours after Lila Mae has signed off on it, using the controversial 'Intuitionist' method of ascertaining elevator safety, both Intuitionists and Empiricists recognize the set-up, but may be willing to let Lila Mae take the fall in an election year.
As Lila Mae strives to exonerate herself in this urgent adventure full of government spies, underworld hit men, and seductive double agents, behind the action, always, is the Idea. Lila Mae's quest is mysteriously entwined with existence of heretofore lost writings by James Fulton, father of Intuitionism, a giant of vertical thought. If she is able to find and reveal his plan for the perfect, next-generation elevator, the city as it now exists may instantly become obsolescent.

HIGHLY ANTICIPATED OPRAH DAILY PICK FOR 2023

'Whether in high literary form or entertaining, page-turner mode, the man is simply incapable of writing a bad book' IAN WILLIAMS, GUARDIAN

'Whitehead has a talent for creating ambiguous, complex scenes that fix in your memory' EVENING STANDARD

'When he moves into a new genre, he keeps the bones but does his own decorating' WASHINGTON POST

From two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead comes the thrilling and entertaining sequel to Harlem Shuffle

1971 - Trash is piled on the streets, crime is at a record high, and the city is careening towards bankruptcy. A shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Ray Carney, furniture-store owner and ex fence, is trying to keep his head down, his business up, and his life on the straight and narrow. His only immediate need is Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May, so what harm could it do to hit up Munson, his old police contact and fixer extraordinaire? And suddenly, staying out of the game becomes more complicated - and deadly. When one of Ray's tenants is badly injured in a fire, he enlists the enduringly violent Pepper to look into how it started, leading the duo to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent and the utterly corrupt.


In scalpel-sharp prose and with unnerving clarity and wit, Colson Whitehead writes about a city that runs on cronyism, threats, ego, ambition, incompetence and even, sometimes, pride. Crook Manifesto is a kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem, and a searching portrait of how families work in the face of indifference, chaos and hostility.

«Un autor que roza la maestría [...]. Whitehead se ha convertido en uno de los mejores novelistas de Estados Unidos».

Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

Ray Carney, hijo de un miembro de la mafia local y padre de familia modélico, regenta la tienda de muebles de la calle Ciento veinticinco, en Harlem. Ray intenta alejarse de la vida de delincuencia que su padre le mostró de niño, pero con un segundo hijo en camino necesita sacarse un dinero extra revendiendo artículos robados. Ahora, su primo Freddie le ofrece participar en algo más peligroso: el robo del famoso hotel Theresa, el Waldorf de Harlem. Policías corruptos, gángsters locales y pornógrafos pirómanos pasan a formar parte de su clientela habitual, y Ray tendrá que hacer equilibrios para mantener esta doble vida sin morir en el intento.

El multipremiado Colson Whitehead regresa con una historia deslumbrante que recrea el paisaje criminal del Harlem de los años sesenta, un lugar que se convertirá en el centro de la lucha por los derechos civiles y donde la muerte de un adolescente negro abatido a tiros por la policía desencadenará los famosos disturbios de 1964. Una vez más, el autor pone de relieve las desigualdades y la discriminación racial de una época cuyos ecos aún resuenan en nuestro presente, en una novela criminal cargada de humor con la que consigue romper de nuevo las reglas del género negro.

La crítica ha dicho:
«Uno de los mejores escritores norteamericanos vivos».
Mitchell S. Jackson, Time

«Su escritura hace lo que la escritura debe hacer: actualiza nuestra percepción del mundo».
John Updike, New Yorker

«La novela clava las complejidades del pasado de Nueva York, desde las maravillas de la Feria Mundial hasta la desesperación de los disturbios en Harlem».
Los Angeles Times

«Whitehead pone a prueba su fuerza literaria, expandiendo los límites y las expectativas de la novela negra. Este libro es también un drama social que interroga la naturaleza de los prejuicios y cómo el entorno limita la ambición».
The Guardian, Book of the Day

«Gloriosamente entretenido [...] un drama social chispeante, que combina pinceladas de alta comedia con reflexiones sobre la esencia de la emancipación y el empoderamiento negros en Estados Unidos. Es poco probable que surja una novela mejor este año».
The Evening Standard

«La trama que (Whitehead) ha ideado para El ritmo de Harlem le ha ofrecido un nuevo motor narrativo de alta velocidad con el que jugar, pero también le ha dado una forma de explorar ideas sobre la naturaleza resbaladizade la moralidad, el poder (y quién lo posee) y las jerarquías sociales de subculturas criminales».
The New York Times

«Una apasionante novela de atracos ambientada en la era del Harlem de los derechos civiles. [...] Es una historia superlativa, pero el logro más impresionante es la representación amorosa que hace Whitehead del Harlem de los años 60, que aterriza de manera tan detallada y vívida como el Dublín de Joyce. No se sorprendan si esta novela le otorga a Whitehead otro premio importante».
Publishers Weekly

«Una novela emocionante y sabia».

Depois de dois prémios Pulitzer, Colson Whitehead volta a colocar o dedo na grande ferida da América, construindo um romance desassombrado e mordaz sobre desigualdade e injustiça, que é também uma carta de amor ao bairro nova-iorquino do Harlem.

Ray Carney tem uma história semelhante à de várias outras do seu bairro. É vendedor de mobília, pai de família, homem pacato. Pouca gente sabe que ele descende de uma linhagem de rufiões e que, sob a aparência de normalidade, há várias pontas soltas no seu caminho.

Como o dinheiro nem sempre chega, Ray desenrasca-se com esquemas trapaceiros e biscates pouco recomendáveis, à boleia das atividades ilícitas do primo Freddie. Mas há um dia em que os planos dão para o torto e Ray cai numa teia de corrupção, crime e pornografia, a que não faltam polícias duvidosos e arruaceiros sem escrúpulos. Começa aqui a sua vida dupla e

Ray vai percebendo melhor quem realmente puxa os cordelinhos por ali.

Um mistério policial entrelaçado com a história de uma família comum, encenado no fervilhante Harlem dos anos 60, sobre o pano de fundo do movimento dos direitos civis, numa época histórica irrepetível, que mudaria para sempre o mundo. Colson Whitehead - "mestre do romance", um dos mais premiados escritores da atualidade e voz literária fundamental na história da cultura negra - oferece-nos uma narrativa de crimes e castigos, episódios tragicómicos, pequenas vinganças e grandes disfarces. Um impressionante romance sobre raça e poder, os temas fulcrais da obra deste escritor.

«Whitehead oferece-nos aqui a sua magnífica eloquência, numa trama onde se enredam história urbana, estratificação racial, grandes esperanças e pequenos trafulhas.»

The New York Times

"O leitor é transportado para o centro do movimento dos direitos civis, numa época em que os tumultos no Harlem começaram a transformar a cena política. A partir daqui, Whitehead constrói um romance policial brilhante, capaz de se desdobrar ainda numa reflexão acerca da geografia negra." Financial Times

"Desenrolando-se a um ritmo veloz, revelador de arguta capacidade de análise e fino sentido de humor, este é um romance sobre raça, poder e a história do Harlem, sob a capa de um policial pleno de adrenalina." San Francisco Chronicle

"Ao contrário dos romances anteriores, A estrada subterrânea e Os rapazes de Nickel, dedicados a temas sérios como a escravatura e o sistema de justiça juvenil, Ao ritmo do Harlem é uma folia desenfreada e cativante. No entanto, também aqui o autor dá voz à devastadora desigualdade histórica que separa negros e brancos na Nova Iorque do século XX." The Independent

"Um romance que é alta literatura mas também pura e descomplexada literatura policial." Los Angeles Times

"Whitehead dá continuidade a uma longa linhagem de escritores negros que usam de modo subversivo o romance policial, expondo as hipocrisias da justiça, os falsos argumentos morais do capitalismo e o facto de a América ter tido origem num saque de que todos somos cúmplices.

PREMIO PULITZER 2020

Una de las 10 mejores novelas de la década pasada según la revista Time.

El autor de El ferrocarril subterráneo (Premio Pulitzer 2017) vuelve a ganar el Pulitzer con la estremecedora historia de dos amigos que luchan por su supervivencia.

Bestseller de The New York Times
Premiado con The Kirkus Prize
Nominado al National Book Award y finalista del National Book Critics Circle Award
Mejor libro de 2019 según Time. Entre los 10 mejores libros de 2019 según Publishers Weekly. Entre los 20 mejoreslibros de 2019 según Amazon y Apple. Entre los 10 mejores libros de 2019 según los libreros de Barnes &Nobles

Desde pequeño, Elwood Curtis ha escuchado con devoción, en el viejo tocadiscos de su abuela, los discursos de Martin Luther King. Sus ideas, al igual que las de James Baldwin, han hecho de este adolescente negro un estudiante prometedor que sueña con un futuro digno. Pero de poco sirve esto en la Academia Nickel para chicos: un reformatorio que se vanagloria de convertir a sus internos en hombres hechos y derechos pero que oculta una realidad inhumana respaldada por muchos y obviada por todos. Elwood intenta sobrevivir a este lugar junto a Turner, su mejor amigo en la Nickel. El idealismo de uno y la astucia del otro les llevará a tomar una decisión que tendrá consecuencias irreparables.

Después de El ferrocarril subterráneo, Colson Whitehead nos brinda una historia basada en el estremecedor caso real de un reformatorio de Florida que destrozó la vida de miles de niños y que le ha hecho merecedor de su segundo premio Pulitzer. Esta deslumbrante novela, a caballo entre el momento presente y el final de la segregación racial estadounidense de los sesenta, interpela directamente al lector y muestra la genialidad de un escritor en la cima de su carrera.

Reseñas:
«Una lectura necesaria.»
Barack Obama

«Colson Whitehead continua haciendo del género clásico americano el suyo propio [...] Es la voz de las historias suprimidas; su escritura es tanto ética como estética.»
The New York Times

«Una narración cautivadora que refuerza la posición de Whitehead como una de las principales voces de la literatura norteamericana.»
Time

«Una novela sorprendentemente distinta a El ferrocarril subterráneo. Whitehead revela las atrocidades clandestinas de la Academia Nickel con la dosificación justa como para mantenernos en un estado de temor palpable.