Friday Black

By: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Narrated by: Corey Allen, Carra Patterson

'An excitement and a wonder' George Saunders

'The fiction debut of the year. Bravo young man. We await your encore' Mary Karr

'The writing in this outstanding collection will make you hurt and demand your hope' Roxane Gay

Racism, but "managed" through virtual reality. Black Friday, except you die in a bargain-crazed throng. Happiness, but pharmacological. Love, despite everything.

Friday Black tackles urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explores the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In the first, unforgettable story of this collection, The Finkelstein Five, Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unstinting reckoning of the brutal prejudice of the US justice system. In Zimmer Land we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And Friday Black and How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.

Fresh, exciting, vital and contemporary, Friday Black will appeal to people who love Colson Whitehead's Underground Railroad, the TV show Black Mirror, the work of Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders, and anyone looking for stories that speak to the world we live in now.

©2018 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (P)2018 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"An excitement and a wonder." (George Saunders)

"The fiction debut of the year. Bravo young man. We await your encore." (Mary Karr)

"The writing in this outstanding collection will make you hurt and demand your hope." (Roxane Gay)

Great stories mixed with some just good

I enjoyed this collection greatly, but sometimes it felt like the stories petered out rather than finished. However, some of the stories are absolute diamonds.