Skip to main navigation Skip to main content

Graywolf Press is hiring a Development Director! Candidates can be based in the Twin Cities or NYC—learn more and apply here.

Book Title

Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Subtitle
A Novel
Author 1
Percival Everett
Body

A story unfolds inside a story as a man visits his aging father in a nursing home. Each man tells overlapping tales: A painter meets a long-lost daughter. A man named Murphy can’t distinguish between the brothers who employ him. And in Murphy’s troubled dreams, Nat Turner imagines the life of William Styron. Anecdotes from the nursing home intertwine and crest in a wild excursion of the inmates. All the while a running commentary from father and son anchors the shifting plotlines and sheds doubt on their truthfulness. A powerful meditation on the humiliations of old age, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell is an ingenious culmination of Everett’s recurring preoccupations. All of his metaphysical and philosophical inquiries, his investigations into the nature of narrative, have led to this, his most important and elusive novel to date.


Share Title

List Price
$17.00
ISBN
ISBN
978-1-55597-634-7
Format
Format
Paperback
Publication Date
Publication Date
Subject
Subject
Pages
Pages
240
Trim Size
Trim Size
5.5 x 8.25
Keynote

“Anything we take for granted, Mr. Everett means to show us, may turn out to be a lie.”—The Wall Street Journal


About the Author

Percival  Everett
Credit: Michael Avedon
Percival Everett is the author of more than thirty books, most recently JamesDr. No, winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; The Trees, finalist for the Booker Prize; and Telephone, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
More by author

Praise

  • “I heartily commend this book to you. It’s like a carnival ride, but not the kind where you vomit. . . . Percival Everett numbers among his very best.”—Lydia Millet, The Los Angeles Times
  • “Everett is one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers. . . . His work takes hold of us and won’t let go.”—Alan Cheuse, NPR.org
  • “A potent and thoughtful exploration of the bonds between fathers and children.”Washington Post
  • “[A] stark, shattering novel. . . . Everett [is] a scandalously under-recognized contemporary master. . . . This meta-fiction is deeply moving.”Wall Street Journal
Back to Table of Contents