A Mess in Harlem

Elwood Curtis lives in Tallahassee, Florida, with his grandmother and is about to start studying at the local college. But for a black boy in the Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, a simple mistake is enough to ruin his future. Elwood is sentenced to confinement at the Nickel Juvenile Reformatory, which provides ‘physical, mental and moral education’ so that the juvenile offenders in its care may become ‘honest and upright citizens’. In reality, it is a hellhole: the sadistic staff physically and sexually abuse the pupils, corrupt officials and locals steal food and supplies, and any boy who resists is likely to vanish. Elwood has the ideas of Dr Martin Luther King deeply ingrained within him – ‘Throw us in jail, and we will love you all the more’. His friend Turner believes that Elwood is more than just naive and that the only way to survive is to have a plan and stay out of trouble. Based on the true story of a reform school in Florida, which operated for one hundred and eleven years and destroyed the lives of thousands of children, leaving its mark on them even to this day, the book is a harrowing, powerful narrative by an exceptional American novelist.

To his customers and neighbours in Harlem, Ray Carney is an honest man, a shopkeeper who does everything he can to support himself and his family. Few realise that this façade of normality is riddled with cracks. Cracks that begin to widen more and more when Ray’s petty-criminal cousin, Freddy, drags him into the robbery of the Theresa Hotel. To his surprise, Ray finds he is easily acclimatising to the Harlem underworld, and his new clientele consists of corrupt police officers, violent gangsters, sleazy pornographers and other scum. Thus begins the internal struggle between the honest Ray and the crooked Ray, who, as he balances between his two selves, realises who is really pulling the strings in Harlem. Will Ray manage not to get himself killed, to save Freddy and claim his share of the big haul, but also to accept who he really is? Colson Whitehead, a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, transports us to 1960s New York, blending a family saga, a crime novel, a comedy, a social commentary on race and power, and a love letter to Harlem, with a fast-paced narrative that captivates the reader. The book topped The New York Times bestseller list, was named one of the 100 most important books of the year by TIME magazine, and featured on Barack Obama’s list of favourite books for 2021. [Read what Myrsini Gkana wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/mirsini-gkana-metafrazontas-to-mperdema-sto-charlem-tou-colson-whitehead)

1971 New York is drowning in rubbish and crime. The war between gangs and the police rages fiercely on the streets. The city is heading steadily towards bankruptcy. Amidst the gloom of the era, former petty con artist Ray Carney tries to keep a low profile and his business out of trouble. The events that follow, however, will dash all his hopes… Following *Harlem Melody*, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead returns with a surprisingly entertaining novel, masterfully completing the ‘Harlem Trilogy’. The Con Artists’ Manifesto is a vivid portrait of a family and a metropolis on the brink of chaos and destruction. Its pages bring to life the turbulent yet irresistible 1970s, as well as a New York City dangerously shaken by corruption, conflict and raw violence. A sharp novel, brimming with life, humour, tension and intelligence, which has already captivated a global audience and will surely go down as one of the greatest literary depictions of an era and a city. ‘Stunning… The art of the novel at its finest. Bigger and better than anything Whitehead has written to date.’ —The Washington Post [Read what Myrsini Gkana wrote on our blog about the translation of the book.](https://ikarosbooks.gr/blog/mirsini-gkana-metafrazontas-to-manifesto-apateonon-tou-colson-whitehead)