Erasure is Percival Everett's hilarious satire about race and publishing, now an Oscar-nominated film, American Fiction, directed by Cord Jefferson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Tracee Ellis Ross.
'Hilarious . . . Everett is a first-rate word-wrangler.' – Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian
Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison's once-acclaimed writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers. He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited 'some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days'.
Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies – his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before.
In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off an outlandish novel full of stereotypes. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is, and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing.
How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical and quietly devastating novel.
'Sublime . . . brilliant, uproarious . . . A wise novel about how we live.' – Brandon Taylor, author of the Booker Prize-shortlisted Real Life
'Seminal doesn't even come close. This novel is Everett at his finest, full of trademark protest, humanity and incisive humour, all wrapped up in one hell of a story.' – Courttia Newland, author of A River Called Time
