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Erasure by Percival Everett

This month’s book is not a recent publication. In fact it was first published in 2001, but the themes it tackles are still very relevant today. It’s Erasure, by Percival Everett.

Percival Everett is a prolific author of more than 30 books, whose most recent book, James, was a finalist for the recently-announced 2024 Booker Prize. Erasure won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction, and was filmed as American Fiction. According to Wikipedia: „His books are often satirical, aimed at exploring race and identity issues in the United States.“

The publisher’s description of Erasure says: „With your book sales at an all-time low, your family falling apart and your agent telling you you’re not black enough, what’s an author to do? Thelonius ‘Monk’ Ellison has the answer.   Or does he….?“

This experimental novel describes what happens when, while coping with a crisis in his family, an author, who doesn’t want to be categorized as ‘black’, hits back at the lack of success of his novels by writing a parody of a recently successful ‘black’ novel.

This book sparked a really lively discussion at the last meeting of our Reading Circle.

Book recommendations from Reading Circle members:

• The Vanishing Half by Britt Bennett (2020). How the lives of identical twins in a Southern black community develop differently.
• The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018). The importance of trees for generations of an American family, with important ecological insights.
• Doppelganger by Naomi Klein (2023). Examines the current climate of political polarisation and conspiracy thinking, by contrasting Klein’s worldview with that of Naomi Wolf, with whom Klein is often confused.
• Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance (2016).
• James by Percival Everett (2024). Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn seen from the point of view of Jim, the runaway slave.
• Connie by Connie Chung (2024). Autobiography of a TV presenter, the youngest child of Chinese immigrants to the USA.
• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck (2021). Winner of the International Booker Prize. In German but also available in English translation. A chaotic affair between 19-year-old Katherine and Hans, a 53-year-old writer in East Berlin just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Music played:

• DNA by Kendrick Lamaar
• In the Ghetto by Elvis Presley

Next month when we will be introducing Disappearing Earth by Julia Phillips(2019).

About Disappearing Earth
One August afternoon, on the shoreline of the north-eastern edge of Russia, two sisters are abducted. In the ensuing weeks, then months, the police investigation turns up nothing. Echoes of the disappearance reverberate across a tightly woven community, with the fear and loss felt most deeply among its women.
Set on the remote Siberian peninsula of Kamchatka, a region that is as complex as it is alluring, Disappearing Earth draws us into the world of an astonishing cast of characters, all connected by an unfathomable crime.