The debut novel by the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of James and The Trees, republished in the Picador Collection.

‘American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist’ – The New Yorker

Craig Suder, third baseman for the Seattle Mariners, is in a slump. His batting average is shocking, his marriage somehow worse, and he secretly fears he’s inherited his mother’s insanity. Ordered to take a midseason rest, Suder instead takes his LP of Charlie Parker’s “Ornithology” and flees.

A dazzling tale of madness, confinement and the need for escape, Suder introduced Percival Everett to the world as a writer already fully capable of conjuring whole lives and worlds on the page.

Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.

Read Percival's Booker Prize-shortlisted novel James in paperback now.

"A mad work of comic genius, combining symbols and myths from ancients and moderns, white culture and black, juxtaposing heartbreaks with farce to make up a narrative that has never, never been told before" - The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"[A] marvellous first novel" - The New York Times Book Review

"Very funny – sometimes excruciatingly so" - Publishers Weekly

"Who could meld baseball and jazz with the most wistful male myth of all – the Icarus myth –remembering that Daedalus really did do it: He flew" - The Los Angeles Times Book Review

"American literature’s philosopher king – and its sharpest satirist" - The New Yorker

"Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy" - The New York Times