Erasure: A Novel

Written by Percival Everett

Narrated by Sean Crisden

Percival Everett's blistering satire about race and writing

Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." 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 a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is-under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh-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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Dec 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798350860405

Percival Everett

Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including So Much Blue, Telephone, Dr No and The Trees, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize. He has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His novel Erasure has now been adapted into the major film American Fiction. He lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Erasure

[Ibrahim Williams · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Truly amazing book! Great audio recording too! Fabulous! Love it!

[Fred · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Stunning. The saddest part of my spring was finishing this book.

[Mindy Clark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Classic Percival Everett. Great characters and story, but the ending doesn’t tie all the loose ends up, which is what happens in real life.

[kyndra · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

An awesome book! The story was amazingly told. The narrator did an awesome job!

[cutecandles2019 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Absolutely loved this book it is a great read! I love how Everett was able to write a book within a book and make me believe I was reading from two different authors.

[PMinoofar · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a brilliant, competent, clear and entertaining narration of the book. Like many, I was inspired to listen to this book after watching its movie adaptation, American Fiction. It is that rare case that the movie stands as a superb adaptation of a terrific book in both the ways in which it is faithful to the book and the ways in which it strays from it. The book, as is typical of the medium, is much more contemplative and deeper than the movie. This is a wonderful audio book, and non one will regret listening to it through.