Synopsis
It turned out that my music had never left me. It had been stolen, yes, but not stolen away. I had simply never been free to play it . . .
When Arthur Champion, a gifted young music scholar, is sent away to war, he experiences the horrors of the Somme trenches. Surviving the slaughter, he begins to forge a new life for himself, discovering the profound, subversive power of his own musical voice.
His extraordinary odyssey takes him from playing in the jazz clubs of Paris to performing for Woodrow Wilson in the White House, and back again, his only constant companions his humour, his abiding love for music, and the racism of the age.
Serious Music is the outstanding story of a young Black man’s struggle to find his place in a world that resents his very existence. It is a profoundly moving novel about trauma, survival, and the weaponization of art, and it is sure to cement Percival Everett’s reputation as one of our greatest living writers.
‘An American master at the peak of his powers’ – Financial Times
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Reviews
“A captivating response to Mark Twain's classic that is both a bold exploration of a dark chapter in history and a testament to resilience of the human spirit”The 2024 Booker Prize Judges, on James
“Percival Everett is a giant of American letters, and James is a canon-shatteringly great book. Unforgiving and compassionate, beautiful and brutal, a tragedy and a farce, this brilliant novel rewrites literary history to let us hear the voices it has long suppressed”Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust
“Scorchingly funny . . . A significant and exhilarating corrective to history, told in the most compelling of voices”The Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year
