Politics & Prose at Busboys and Poets 14th & V welcomes A. Igoni Barrett to discuss his new book "BlackAss."
The night before an interview, Furo Wariboko goes to bed a young Nigerian and wakes to find he's been transformed into a white man. In this "Kafkaesque satire" (Teju Cole), we follow him as his initial fear and confusion shifts from shame into shameless opportunism. Barrett, who has held fellowships from the Chinua Achebe Center, the Norman Mailer Center, and has won a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center Residency as well as the 2005 BBC World Service short-story competition, reprises the classic “The Metamorphosis” in modern-day Lagos, showing the subtle and not-so-subtle differences our appearance makes. The novel takes on questions of race, social media, even a new career in self-help as we follow Furo's unlikely and illuminating search for identity.
This event is part of the Politics & Prose and the PEN/Faulkner Foundation Contemporary Fiction Reading Series at Busboys and Poets.
