For the avid reader, discerning collector and real Colson Whitehead - fan,
a like new, signed 1st UK edition / 1st printing hardcover copy of
Colson Whitehead
Harlem Shuffle
Fleet, London / UK, 2021
"To his customers and neighbors on 125th street, Carney is an upstanding
salesman of reasonably-priced furniture, making a life for himself and
his family. He and his wife Elizabeth are expecting their second child,
and if her parents on Striver’s Row don’t approve of him or their
cramped apartment across from the subway tracks, it’s still home.
Few people know he descends from a line of uptown hoods and crooks, and
that his façade of normalcy has more than a few cracks in it. Cracks
that are getting bigger and bigger all the time. See, cash is tight, especially with all those instalment plan sofas, so
if his cousin Freddie occasionally drops off the odd ring or necklace at
the furniture store, Ray doesn’t see the need to ask where it comes
from. He knows a discreet jeweller downtown who also doesn’t ask
questions. Then Freddie falls in with a crew who plan to rob the Hotel Theresa –
the ‘Waldorf of Harlem’ – and volunteers Ray’s services as the fence.
The heist doesn’t go as planned; they rarely do, after all. Now Ray has
to cater to a new clientele, one made up of shady cops on the take,
vicious minions of the local crime lord, and numerous other Harlem
lowlifes. Thus begins the internal tussle between Ray the striver and Ray the
crook. As Ray navigates this double life, he starts to see the truth
about who actually pulls the strings in Harlem. Can Ray avoid getting
killed, save his cousin, and grab his share of the big score, all while
maintaining his reputation as the go-to source for all your quality home
furniture needs?
Harlem Shuffle is driven by an ingeniously intricate plot that
plays out in a beautifully recreated Harlem of the early 1960s. It’s a
family saga masquerading as a crime novel, a hilarious morality play, a
social novel about race and power, and ultimately a love letter to
Harlem. " (hachette.co.uk)
"Colson Whitehead is a multi-award winning and bestselling author whose works include The Nickel Boys, The Underground Railroad, The Noble Hustle, Zone One, Sag Harbor, The Intuitionist, John Henry Days, Apex Hides the Hurt and a collection of essays, The Colossus of New York.
He is one of only four novelists to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
twice and is a recipient of MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships. For The Underground Railroad,
Whitehead won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction,
the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Fiction, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for
Excellence and was longlisted for the Booker Prize. He was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for a second time for The Nickel Boys, which also won the George Orwell Prize for Political Fiction and The Kirkus Prize. The Underground Railroad
has been adapted as an Amazon Prime TV series, produced and directed by
the Academy Award winning director Barry Jenkins, and was broadcast in
2021. He lives with his family in New York City." (hachette.co.uk)