The United States of “Chain-Gang All-Stars” is like ours, if sharpened to absurd points and flung a few decades into the future. But it’s fun, I promise.Īnd yet, as much as this book made me laugh at these parts of the world I recognized as being mocked, it also made me wish I recognized less of it. The lulls between bouts give readers a beat to think about all the ways they’ve been conditioned to enjoy such a story, by any number of America’s perversions: its narcotic televised pastimes, its singular talent for mass incarceration, its steady innovation in violence technology, its racial caste system, its eternal appetite for retribution. Even readers who acknowledge the brazen evil of the dystopian premise - these televised duels offer prisoners a path to freedom - might find themselves titillated by its depiction, which functions as both satire and straight-up sportswriting. Instead, it lures you in, as if to demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick. It is an act of protest, but it does not straightforwardly preach.

Adjei-Brenyah is so good at writing fight scenes that our moral disgust never definitively stamps out the primitive thrill of reading them. To enjoy the action is to share in the guilt of the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside at the live-broadcast death matches between prison inmates. Should I be having this much fun? This is one queasy testament to Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s talent: You cannot applaud his debut novel, “Chain-Gang All-Stars,” without getting blood on your hands. CHAIN-GANG ALL-STARS, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Nana kwame friday black