America’s National Book Award held its 75th annual awards ceremony earlier this week. A panel of esteemed judges award ‘the best writing in the US’. Percival Everett claimed the top prize in the fiction category for his novel James, a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told from the point of view of ‘Jim’ – the runaway slave.
James was the favourite to win the Booker Prize this year but lost to Samantha Harvey’s Orbital. In his acceptance speech, Everett essentially let his satirical work speak for itself, thanking his friends and family.
