James

A Novel

by Percival Everett
Dominic Hoffman

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A brilliant, action-packed reimagining of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim's point of view.
From the “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), Pulitzer Prize Finalist, and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime
When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a “literary icon” (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

Creators
- Percival Everett
  
  Author
- Dominic Hoffman
  
  Narrator
Publisher

Books on Tape

Edition: Unabridged
Awards
Release date

March 19, 2024
Formats
- OverDrive Listen audiobook
  - ISBN: 9780593821268
  - File size: 225333 KB
  - Duration: 07:49:26
Languages
- English
Reviews
- Publisher's Weekly
  
  Starred review from December 4, 2023
  As in his classic novel Erasure, Everett portrays in this ingenious retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn a Black man who’s mastered the art of minstrelsy to get what he needs from gullible white people. Many of the same things happen as they do in Twain’s original: Jim escapes from enslavement on a Missouri farm and joins up with Huck, a white boy who’s faked his own death. Huck is fleeing from his abusive father, while Jim is hoping to find a way to free his wife and daughter. The main difference is in the telling. Jim narrates, not Huck, and in so doing he reveals how he employs “slave” talk (“correct incorrect grammar”) when white people can hear, to make them feel safe and superior. Everett also pares down the prose and adds humor in place of sentimentality. When Huck and Jim come upon a band of slave hunters, Huck claims Jim, who’s covered by a tarp, is a white man infected with smallpox (“We keep thinkin’ he gone die, then he just don’t”). Clever additions to the narrative include a tense episode in which Jim is fraudulently sold by a slaver to “Dixie” composer Daniel Decatur Emmett, who has Jim perform in blackface with his singing troupe. Jim’s wrenching odyssey concludes with remarkable revelations, violent showdowns, and insightful meditations on literature and philosophy. Everett has outdone himself.
- AudioFile Magazine
  
  Dominic Hoffman narrates this reimagining of ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN, but this time Jim tells his own story. When Jim learns that he's going to be sold to someone downriver, he flees, leaving behind his wife and daughter. But he soon finds himself tangled up with Huckleberry Finn, a white boy who is always getting into the worst sorts of trouble. Jim is practiced at code-switching, changing his speech when he speaks to white people as a measure of protection. Hoffman's performance captures the varying tone of Jim's dialogue, highlighting the shifts in his vocabulary and rhythm. With its subtlety and attention to detail, Hoffman's narration reinforces Jim's character and narrative arcs as Jim takes back his agency in life. K.D.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine
- Library Journal
  
  February 1, 2025
  Everett's (The Trees) reimagining of Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is expertly narrated by Dominic Hoffman, who offers a layered portrait of James's (as opposed to Twain's "Jim's") integrity and dimensionality. James's escape from the Missouri farm where he was enslaved is as much a journey away from a place as it is a path toward self-actualization. His growth is enacted through philosophical interludes and fleeting companionship, forging space for a fully fleshed out characterization that could not exist within the confines of Twain's work. James meets many friends and foes as he searches for a space and time where he and his loved ones are not constantly subjugated, beaten, and murdered. Hoffman's excellent voicework lays bare James's facility at code-switching, illuminating the instant fear forced upon Black people when in the presence of any white person, regardless of their class status. Everett's writing and Hoffman's narration combine to interrogate and activate James's quest for freedom, shifting him from Twain's sidelines into a heroic spotlight. VERDICT Winding, intriguing, and acute, this novel is less a retelling than a reinvestigation of Twain's classic, made possible by Everett's incisive prose and Hoffman's absorbing narration.--Kailyn Slater
  
  Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Library Journal
  
  February 1, 2025
  Everett reimagines Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, offering a resonant portrait of James--whom listeners will recognize as Twain's "Jim"--and revealing the harrowing reality of enslavement. Narrator Dominic Hoffman embodies James with exquisite skill, piercingly communicating the depths of his integrity and solemn insight. Hoffman nimbly articulates James's facility at code-switching, underlaid with the ever-present fear of attracting notice from his unpredictable and casually cruel enslavers.
  
  Copyright 2025 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
- Good Reading Magazine
  
  James is an extraordinary novel reimagining The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of Huck’s friend and Miss Watson’s slave, Jim – or, as he prefers, James. Everett’s skill subverts the racism within the original novel, without negating Huck’s obvious love for his friend. But here, Huck is a secondary character: this novel is James’s story. Descartes stated, ‘I think therefore I am’. James, by applying pencil to paper, writes to prove his own existence and worth. The plot follows a similar but not identical path to the original narrative, with James running away because he’s about to be sold, and Huck joining him on Jackson Island because he fears his violent father. The muddy brown Mississippi flows through the narrative and is both an escape route and death trap. They raft along that river encountering various characters, including the Duke and Dauphin from Twain’s story. Everett evokes the clownishness of these two conmen, but this only serves to emphasise the jarring contrast between that comedy and their subsequent brutality. James and Huck are separated. Everett steers James into situations where the cruelty of slavery is exposed. James finds himself ‘hired’ (bought) by the manager of a minstrel troupe using blackface to pretend an exaggerated Blackness to amuse White citizens. James befriends Norman, another slave, but one so pale he passes as White. Initially, the minstrels present an ‘abolitionist’ position by having Black men, James and (unknowingly) Norman in their troupe, but James discovers that although they don’t own slaves, they have no opposition to others doing so. James reasons then that they’re slavers by philosophy, rather than practice. This philosophical conundrum is one of several in the narrative. (James converses with John Locke in a delirium and Wittgenstein’s language games are paramount to James’s identity.) James is reunited with Huck as the story reaches its climax. The plot is – like Huck – a secondary element. This novel concerns identity as it’s expressed through character and language. James is more than literate. When he speaks with White people, he adopts the clumsy, vernacular English they expect. The language he speaks while narrating and when talking with other slaves is better English than spoken by slave owners. Slave identity is performative, and Everett unmasks the associated patois as its own form of imprisonment. Characters are drawn to be neither all good nor all bad – including James – and specifies that White doesn’t necessarily mean bad, and Black isn’t always good. In the 140 years since publication, the original Twain novel has drawn criticism from various quarters. Twain was initially criticised for his use of vernacular language, and later for his novel’s racism. This novel will probably draw awards and criticism in equal measure. Awards will be well-deserved; criticism won’t. Everett will likely be criticised for allowing James to have superior English to White people. (I can already hear ‘uppity’ shouted from the shadows.) This outstanding, captivating, brilliantly written novel examines and dissects America’s racial divide and deserves every accolade possible. Reviewed by Bob Moore ABOUT THE AUTHOR 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...