Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR * FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION * A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK * NATIONAL BESTSELLER * Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black * LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE
"This book is so good. Brutal subject matter, beautiful writing. This one is from the heart." -- Stephen King
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews
"Like Orwell's 1984 and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale , Adjei-Brenyah's book presents a dystopian vision so...illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we're capable of doing." -- The Washington Post
She felt their eyes, all those executioners...
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars i s a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a "new and necessary American voice" (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review ).
Publisher's Weekly Review
Bestseller Adjei-Brenyah sets his breathtaking and pulse-pounding debut novel (after the short story collection Friday Black) in a dystopian alternate U.S. where people incarcerated in an expansive private prison system have the option to fight for their freedom in gladiator-style death matches. Fighters who partake in the Chain-Gang All-Stars operation can rise to fame and notoriety, a crucial profit-driving component for those who control CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment. Among these superstars are fighters Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker, who have made names for themselves as undefeated champions and "Links," or teammates in a Chain-Gang. As Thurwar takes a step closer to freedom one match at a time, however, she begins to worry about leaving Hamara and her other Links behind. Through this brutal, fight-scene-studded story, the author delivers insightful critiques of the prison-industrial complex, capitalism, and the ways in which Hollywood and celebrity culture exploit Black talent. Both the political allegory and the edge-of-your-seat action work beautifully. Readers will be wowed. Agent: Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, Gernert Co. (May)
Booklist Review
Adjei-Brenyah's stellar, stupendous story collection, Friday Black (2018), could have been mere prelude to the relentlessly vicious horror of his first novel. In a not-so-unfamiliar alternate America, prisoners convicted of violent crimes are coerced and tortured into joining CAPE--Criminal Action Penal Entertainment--for an almost impossible chance at freedom. Participants become Links in strategically created Chain-Gangs; survival means slaughtering their way through death matches, earning Blood Points. While the controlling corporations rake in the blood money, the public, even young children, cannot get enough. Two of the most beloved Chain-Gang All-Stars are Loretta Thurwar and Hurricane Staxx, both so close to, yet still so far from, getting out. What might seem to be a dystopian nightmare is even more terrifying because Adjei-Brenyah brilliantly broadcasts such irrefutable truths as the U.S. having the world's highest rate of incarceration, with disproportionate numbers of Black and POC prisoners. His chilling footnotes shrewdly interrupt his fiction with real names and stark statistics, exposing racism, inequity, corruption, suicide, and abuse. Prison privatization is already a high-profit industry, as is celebrated, legalized fighting (boxing, MMA, wrestling). Adjei-Brenyah's reality-adjacent tale could ultimately, terrifyingly, prove prescient. Given the rampant, explicit brutality, all should heed a character's warning, "I'll tell you and I can't untell you, you understand?"HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The resounding success of Adjei-Brenyah's first book has his second avidly touted as a most anticipated title of the year.
Excerpts
The Freeing of Melancholia Bishop She felt their eyes, all those executioners. "Welcome, young lady," said Micky Wright, the premier announcer for Chain-Gang All-Stars, the crown jewel in the Criminal Action Penal Entertainment program. "Why don't you tell us your name?" His high boots were planted in the turf of the BattleGround, which was long and green, stroked with cocaine-white hash marks, like a divergent football field. It was Super Bowl weekend, a fact that Wright was contractually obligated to mention between every match that evening. "You know my name." She noticed her own steadiness and felt a dim love for herself. Strange. She'd counted herself wretched for so long. But the crowd seemed to appreciate her boldness. They cheered, though their support was edged with a brutal irony. They looked down on this Black woman, dressed in the gray jumpsuit of the incarcerated. She was tall and strong, and they looked down on her and the tight coils of black hair on her head. They looked down gleefully. She was about to die. They believed this the way they believed in the sun and moon and the air they breathed. "Feisty," Wright said with a grin. "Maybe that's what we should call you-- Little Miss Feisty." "My name is Loretta Thurwar," she said. She looked at the people all around her. There were so many of them, so many waves of humans who would never be the object of such cruel attention. Would never know how it made you feel, both tiny and all-powerful. How the thrum of thousands was so loud, so constant, it could disappear from your ears but continue to roar as something felt in the body. Thurwar gripped the weapon she'd been given: a thin spiraling corkscrew with a cherrywood handle. It was light and simple and weak. "Not Little Miss Feisty, then?" Wright said, walking a wide orbit around her. "No." "That's probably for the best, Loretta." He stepped toward his box. "I hate wasting good names anyway." He laughed and the crowd echoed him. "Well, Loretta Thurwar"-- he threw his playful condescension directly at her, chopping her first name into three hard syllables, using a singsong child's voice for her last-- "welcome to the BattleGround, baby." There was an electric cough in the air and Thurwar was pulled down so forcefully she feared for a moment her arm had been dislocated at the shoulder. Kneeling, not knowing what else to do, she started to laugh. Chuckling first, then deep laughter. The feeling of hold that came from the magnetic implants in her arms was actually one of gentle massage under the skin. She could wiggle her fingers freely, but her wrists were glued to the platform. The ridiculousness of it all. She laughed until she felt out of breath, then laughed some more. The bells began to sound. Wright screamed into the air, "Please rise for Her Majesty!" He ran the rest of the way to his announcer's box. The crowd stood on their feet. They held themselves still and erect. For her. She walked onto the faux football field. Aluminum alloy on her arms. Braids that stopped at the back of her neck. Exposed shoulders each tattooed with the WholeMarket(tm) logo. A series of rods jutted out from her chest guard and circled her muscled abdomen to form a sleek cage. It was a custom creation. Thurwar had watched, even cheered, the first time she'd seen that the metallic pieces, initially thought to be exclusively defensive, were more. She'd been watching, huddled with the others in her cell block around the streaming video feed, when the woman had removed two of the rods from her guard and pressed them into Slingshot Bob's eyes. And now Thurwar was seeing them up close. This was Melancholia Bishop's final fight. Bishop had made it. She had done what no woman before her had done, survived three years on the Circuit. Three years of slamming down her hammer, Hass Omaha, and swiping her mace, Vega. Three years conquering souls. "Drowned King County's very own Queen of the Damned!" All she had in her hands was her helmet. Melody's Helm. Crusaderstyle, made of tin with a gold cross down its middle. "The Annihilator, the Bad News Bitch, the Death Songstress herself!" The seventh bell rang; the people screamed. For years this had been their sacred ritual. The seven bells of Melancholia Bishop. They'd seen her wipe scum o_ the earth. They'd seen her kill women and men whom they'd once claimed to love. Now she stood and looked out at them for the last time. Soon, she would be free. Melancholia Melancholia Melancholia The crowd chanted. Her brown eyes explored the bleachers. Then she raised the helm above her head. Once it was on, she was home. Melancholia Melancholia Melancholia "For the last time ever," Wright cheered, "please help me welcome the winningest woman ever to step on the BattleGround. The Mistress of the Murder Ballad. The Sacred Sweetheart. The Crusader. The baddest the planet has ever seen. Your very own Melody 'Melancholia Bishop' Price!" Your very own, Thurwar thought, rattled by the force of the love that exploded out from the audience. They loved her so, and still, this woman, despite it all, belonged to none of them. She had an aura about her that made that clear. It was enough to push Thurwar's eyes down to the ground. As if the woman in front of her truly were royalty. Thurwar watched, bowed in her Keep, an impossible power in front of her. The hammer and the mace. On one side of the field there was a knight in her armor. On the other, there was Thurwar in a jumpsuit, a corkscrew slick in her clammy hands. Bishop! Bishop! "Any final words for us, Melancholia?" Wright asked. "What's left to say?" she said, her voice echoing metallic but familiar through her helmet as she addressed the crowd. "I'm in the same place I started." The crowd cheered wildly. "When I got here, I had two Ms on my back. Two murders. When I leave, I'll still just have two. But I had to kill so many more people than that to get here." "That's very true. You've cleaved through so many," Wright said. "But any of those stand out to you? So many highlights. And you've overcome more than your fair share of doubt. Here on the mountaintop, when you look back down, what are you proudest of?" "Proud?" A metal face turned toward the sky. Her shoulders bounced and she laughed. The crowd followed awkwardly. Chuckling because this was their queen. As the crowd grew raucous with laughter, Melancholia fell silent. Then was a moment when the crowd seemed not to know what to do next. "Lock-in!" Wright yelled. Again, a force sounded, this time locking Melancholia Bishop into the platform beneath her. The HMC that she'd been speaking into flew up and behind her. The crowd let out a small gasp. To force-lock her, to silence her, on her freeing day. It was beneath them. A sudden force-lock was what you gave the despicable, the uninitiated, the unruly, the afraid. And so they turned their noses up at it, but turned them back down just as quickly to take in the history unfolding before them: the freeing of Melancholia Bishop. "Let's deathmatch!" Wright yelled. The loud, empty sound of unlock called through the arena. The women were released upon each other. Excerpted from Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
