James by Percival Everett reimagines Huckleberry Finn from Jim's perspective and won the Pulitzer Prize. Our honest verdict on the most important American novel of 2024.
• You value formal literary ambition
• You're interested in American history, race, and the literature that engages with it
• You've read Huckleberry Finn or are willing to (or just look up the plot)
• You want American fiction that is genuinely doing something new
• You've never heard of Huckleberry Finn and have no interest in finding out
• You prefer emotional directness over irony
• You want a long, immersive reading experience — James is short
James is a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim — the enslaved man who travels with Huck, who Twain renders as a comic supporting character. Everett takes that character and gives him an interior life, a voice, a plan, and a relationship to the performance of subservience that Twain was not equipped to imagine.
The central conceit — that enslaved people developed a secret language and a performance of expected behaviour — is both historically grounded and formally brilliant. Jim knows things Huck doesn't. Jim has always known.
Everett has been one of America's most formally inventive novelists for thirty years. James is the book that brought him to the mainstream — it's accessible without being simple, and it's doing serious literary work while remaining a pleasure to read.
The Pulitzer was deserved. This is the kind of novel that will be taught alongside Twain, not as a correction to Twain but as a conversation with him.
James is essential. Short enough to read quickly, significant enough to read slowly. The most formally important American novel of 2024 and one of the best of the decade.
Score: 9.3/10. Read it. Then read it again.