John Henry Days

By: Colson Whitehead

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eBook | 27 March 2014

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400 Pages

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From the author of 'The Underground Railroad', Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, and Longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

'John Henry Days' is a novel of extraordinary scope and mythic power. It established Colson Whitehead as a pre-eminent American writer of our time.

Building the railways that made America, John Henry died with a hammer in his hand moments after competing against a steam drill in a battle of endurance. The story of his death made him a legend.

Over a century later, J. Sutter, a freelance journalist and accomplished expense account abuser, is sent to West Virginia to cover the launch of a new postage stamp at the first 'John Henry Days' festival.

John Henry Days is a work of extraordinary scope, revealing how a nation creates its present through the stories it tells of its past.

Industry Reviews

'Funny and wise and sumptuously written.' Jonathan Franzen

'Blithely gifted...an ambitious, finely chiselled work.' John Updike

'Witty, acerbic and immensely compelling ...Whitehead is a first-rate writer.' Financial Times

' Hugely talented...Colson Whitehead has produced an immensely rich, many stranded novel. The writing is inspired on every page. Just Wonderful! One of my books of the year.' Time Out

'Such is the buoyancy of his talent, and the protean assuredness of his prose, that the result is controlled, poignant, wittily observed and often gleefully comic.' Guardian

'Dazzling ... It may be nothing new to suggest that history is fiction; but the pleasure of reading this ingenious patchwork lies in how it reminds us of the vitality of those fictions.' Independent on Sunday