When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood's only salvation is his friendship with fellow "delinquent" Turner, which deepens despite Turner's conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood's ideals and Turner's skepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades.Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist writing at the height of his powers and "should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).
Colson Whitehead
Colson Whitehead is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist whose work moves across historical fiction, speculative fiction, literary fiction, crime, and satire. Known for refusing to stay within a single genre, Whitehead uses inventive storytelling to examine race, power, history, survival, ambition, and the ways America’s past continues to shape its present.
His acclaimed books include *The Underground Railroad*, *The Nickel Boys*, *Harlem Shuffle*, *Crook Manifesto*, *Zone One*, and *The Intuitionist*. *The Underground Railroad* and *The Nickel Boys* each received the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, making Whitehead one of the few writers to win the award twice. His novels range from reimagined American history and zombie fiction to crime stories set against the changing streets of Harlem.
For readers who want a story that entertains while giving them something substantial to think about, Whitehead offers fiction that can be suspenseful, unsettling, funny, historical, and deeply human—sometimes all at once. His work is especially suited to readers drawn to Black history, morally complicated characters, inventive storytelling, social commentary, and books that reveal something new depending on how closely you look.
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