On Morrison

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR SO FAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE NEW YORKER, VULTURE, ESQUIRE, THE GUARDIAN, AND LIT HUB NATIONAL BESTSELLER An illuminating, electrifying exploration of the work of Toni Morrison by an award-winning novelist and Harvard professor—“a revelatory encounter with the Nobel laureate’s oeuvre” (The New York Times Book Review, Editors’ Choice) “A landmark appraisal of the great novelist’s work . . . I have waited years for this book.”—Laila Lalami, The Guardian “Thrilling . . . ingenious.”—Wesley Morris, The New York Times “In this lavish yet clear-eyed study, Serpell shows how Morrison breathed new life into the novel. This is literary criticism at its finest.”—Time “Revelatory . . . will captivate everyone from newcomers to [Morrison’s] most devoted fans.”—Vulture “Invigorating . . . an informed, accessible literary analysis.”—The Wall Street Journal “Resplendent . . . fresh and smart . . . [a] work of swaggering genius.”—Bookforum “As gripping as it is intellectually brilliant . . . a classic.”—Cathy Park Hong Toni Morrison, Nobel Laureate and one of our most beloved writers, has inspired generations of readers. But her artistic genius is often overshadowed by her monumental public persona, perhaps because, as Namwali Serpell puts it, “she is our only truly canonical black female writer—and her work is highly complex.” In On Morrison, Serpell brings her unique experience as both an award-winning writer and a professor who teaches a course on Morrison to illuminate her masterful experiments with literary form. This is Morrison as you’ve never encountered her before, a journey through her oeuvre—her fiction and criticism, as well as her lesser-known dramatic works and poetry—with contextual guidance and original close readings. At once accessible and uncompromisingly rigorous, On Morrison is a primer not only on how to read one of the most significant American authors of all time but also on how to read great works of literature in general. This dialogue on the page between two black women artist-readers is stylish, edifying, and thrilling in its scope and intelligence.

Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in New York. Her debut novel, The Old Drift, won an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction, and the Los Angeles Times’s Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Her second novel, The Furrows, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and was selected as one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. Her book of essays, Stranger Faces, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism. She is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction, the Caine Prize for African Writing, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She is a professor of English at Harvard University.