Resident Book Review of “James”

Resident Elaine Breslaw will review James: A Novel  [New York: Knopf Doubleday, 2024] by Percival Everett on Tuesday, June 17, 2025 at 7 PM in the Auditorium. This is her review for the June issue of The Sunburst.

In James, Percival Everett retells Mark Twain’s story of Huckleberry Finn’s adventures from the perspective of Jim, the enslaved man who travels with him down the Mississippi River. As in Twain’s novel, both are escaping: Huck from his abusive father, and Jim from the prospect of being sold and separated from his family.

Everett generally follows the broad outlines of Twain’s novel but sets the tale some 20 years later, moving the story to the onset of the Civil War. We follow their adventures down the Mississippi River, meeting the Duke and the King, along with many other characters that fill Twain’s novel, as well as a few others. On the journey, Jim gains a new identity as “James.”

He is now a literate man whose language ability reshapes the story. The satiric humor in this novel, so pointed and so different from Twain’s, provides an unusual perspective on the realities of enslavement.

Described by one reviewer as “A provocative, enlightening work of literary art,” the novel has won many awards, including the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize. It has also been described as a “profound meditation on identity, belonging, and the sacrifices we make to protect the ones we love.”

James is Everett’s twenty-fifth novel, and will soon be made into a movie.

The reviewer, Elaine Breslaw, is a retired Professor of History at Morgan State University. She is also a former librarian and the author of several books on early American History. At one time she reviewed books about American history for the Baltimore Sun.