Hello and welcome to another edition of Inside the Cover.

Tonight, I want to feature and highlight a talented author, Colson Whitehead.

I recently finished his latest work, Crook Manifesto, and I was reminded of what a great, gifted writer he is.

Whitehead is the author of 11 Works of Fiction and Nonfiction and is a two time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also won a National Book Award for fiction.

Whitehead is only the fourth writer to win the Pulitzer Prize twice.

He graduated from Harvard in 1991 and currently lives in New York City.

It is now time to go inside the cover.

Initially, let me note that Whitehead's writing is not for the faint of heart.

He pulls no punches in his writing, and his characters are straight out of real life.

They curse.

They get angry.

They commit crimes.

They have intimate relations.

They struggle.

Whitehead also acknowledges and addresses racism and discrimination.

In this regard, his characters walk the walk.

Perhaps it is this honesty that makes his writing so compelling.

I had previously read The Underground Railroad, which came out in 2016, and The Nickel Boys, which was published in 2019.

It is easy to see why both books were award winners.

Judges for the Pulitzer called The Underground Railroad a smart melding of realism and allegory that combines the violence of slavery and the drama of escape in a myth that speaks to contemporary America.

The Nickel Boys was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Florida, where children convicted of minor offenses suffered violent abuse.

Judges for the Pulitzer called this novel “a spare and devasting, exploration of abuse at a reform school in Jim Crow era Florida that is ultimately a powerful tale of human perseverance, dignity and redemption.

Crook Manifesto was published on July 18, 2023.

It is a follow up to Whitehead's eighth novel Harlem Shuffle, which was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021.

By the way, I understand that Whitehead spent years writing Harlem Shuffle and that he finished it in bite sized chunks during the months he spent in quarantine in New York during the pandemic.

Crook Manifesto is a gritty and unvarnished story of New York City in a time of transition, corruption, violence, crime and skullduggery.

In many ways, it is a novel of survival.

The book is divided into three separate but connected segments taking place in 1971, 1973, and 1976.

The protagonist throughout is Ray Carney, a man whose past continues to haunt and impact his attempt to be a legitimate businessman owning and operating a furniture store in Harlem.

In 1971, in an effort to score some tickets to the Jackson Five concert at Madison Square Garden for his daughter, Ray returns to his prior world after four years of being on the right side of the law.

In 1973, Carney's friend and former partner in crime Pepper, finds himself providing security for a blaxploitation movie being filmed in Harlem.

It is Pepper, who provides the title for the book.

“A man has a hierarchy of crime, of what is morally acceptable and what is not.

A crook manifesto.

And those who subscribe to lesser codes are cockroaches-- are nothing.

” In 1976, with the bicentennial in full swing, the violence of New York burns its way into Carneys life, professional and personal.

Tonight, we have talked about Colson Whitehead.

Whitehead is a writer of substance and significance, whose novels tell a story and share a message.

Crook Manifesto is the latest in a distinguished body of work, and I am glad it reacquainted me with Whitehead's talent.

Good Night and I look forward to our next conversation.