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2015 Longlist

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

ABOUT
THE BOOK

The story unfolds inside a story as a man visits his aging father in a nursing home. Each man tells overlapping tales: A painter meets a long-lost daughter. A man named Murphy can’t distinguish between the brothers who employ him. And in Murphy’s troubled dreams, Nat Turner imagines the life of William Styron. Anecdotes from the nursing home intertwine and crest in a wild excursion of the inmates. All the while a running commentary from father and son anchors the shifting plotlines and sheds doubt on their truthfulness. A powerful meditation on the humiliations of old age, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell is an ingenious culmination of Everett’s recurring preoccupations. All of his metaphysical and philosophical inquiries, his investigations into the nature of narrative, have led to this, his most important and elusive novel to date.

ABOUT
THE AUTHOR Percival
Everett

Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of sixteen books, including Wounded, American Desert, Erasure, and Glyph. He lives in L.A. and British Columbia.

Percival Everett is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of sixteen books, including Wounded, American Desert, Erasure, and Glyph. He lives in L.A. and British Columbia.

NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS

An entanglement of precise language, chimerical story and philosophic nuance.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Date published
05/02/2013
Publisher
Graywolf Press

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