***2021 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER***
***THE NATIONAL BESTSELLER***
Winner of the 2021 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction, Joyce Carol Oates Literary Prize Finalist, 2022 Chautauqua Prize Finalist, Willie Morris Award for Southern Writing Shortlist, 2021 Aspen Words Literary Prize Shortlist, 2022 Maya Angelou Book Award Shortlist, 2022 Carnegie Medal Longlist
A Read With Jenna
Today
Show Book Club Pick!
An Ebony Magazine Publishing Book Club Pick!
One of
Washington Post
's 50 Notable Works of Fiction | One of
Philadelphia Inquirer
's Best Books of 2021
|
One of Shelf Awareness's Top Ten Fiction Titles of the Year | One of TIME Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books
One of NPR.org's "Books We Love" |
EW
’s "Guide to the Biggest and Buzziest Books of 2021"
One of the New York Public Library's Best Books for Adults |
San Diego Union Tribune
—My Favorite Things from 2021
Writer's Bone's Best Books of 2021
Atlanta Journal Constitution—Top 10 Southern Books of the Year
One of the
Guardian
's (UK) Best Ten 21st Century Comic Novels
Entertainment Weekly
's 15 Books You Need to Read This June | On
's "Must List" | One of the
New York Post
's Best Summer Reading books | One of GMA's 27 Books for June
| One of
USA Today
's 5 Books Not to Miss
Fortune
's 21 Most Anticipated Books Coming Out in the Second Half of 2021
The Root
's PageTurners: It’s Getting Hot in Here | One of
Real Simple
's Best New Books to Read in 2021
An astounding work of fiction from
New York Times
bestselling author Jason Mott, always deeply honest, at times electrically funny, that goes to the heart of racism, police violence, and the hidden costs exacted upon Black Americans and America as a whole
In Jason Mott’s
Hell of a Book
, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives
and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
As these characters’ stories build and converge, they astonish. For while this heartbreaking and magical book entertains and is at once about family, love of parents and children, art and money, it’s also about the nation’s reckoning with a tragic police shooting playing over and over again on the news. And with what it can mean to be Black in America.
Who has been killed? Who is The Kid? Will the author finish his book tour, and what kind of world will he leave behind?  Unforgettably told, with characters who burn into your mind and an electrifying plot ideal for book club discussion,
is the novel Mott has been writing in his head for the last ten years. And in its final twists, it truly becomes its title.