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Percival Everett’s novel “James” is told from the perspective of Jim, Huck’s unlikely companion in the Mark Twain classic “Huckleberry Finn.” Percival Everett has won the National Book Award for Fiction for his novel “James,” a retelling of Mark Twain’s classic “Huckleberry Finn.” Published in March to widespread critical acclaim,“James” is told from the perspective of Jim, the escaped slave …

Huckleberry Finn

Los Angeles-based American writer Percival Everett has written over 30 books. Through James, Everett is giving a nod to Mark Twain— “whose humour and humanity affected” him “long before became a writer” — by retelling the great American satirist’s 1884 novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In an interview in The Guardian, Everett said that Twain’s book’s great achievement is that …

Percival Everett’s James is being marketed as a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, but—in keeping with Everett’s history as a jazz musician—it’s more like an improvisation on Twain’s theme. Say all of that again.” Meanwhile, in the presence of flesh-and-blood white people, James says things like “When be da last time Tom Sawyer telled you anythin’ true? “I …