The through-line, and what keeps the author interested, is his study of Carney, “this very slow portraiture of this character.” Carney is not like Stark’s Parker (though Pepper, a vivid recurring character, very much is - a “terse professional … always being pulled down by the inevitable losers you have to associate with”).

And then we pull back and see the real power in the city.” We pull back and get more of a sense of Harlem, and the corruption and the social structure - the hierarchy, the other forces working upon Carney and the other people in Harlem. “We get introduced to the street-level crime in the first book.

With every section, “I’m pulling back more and more on Carney’s world,” Whitehead says. I like to use satire and dark humor.”Ĭlocking in at just over 100 pages each, these interlocked narratives track Carney’s schemes, victories and misdeeds, as well as the changes in his life, in 1959, 19. “There’s an element of fun that was missing in ‘Underground’ and ‘Nickel Boys,’ just ’cause of the subject matter. Whitehead started thinking about “Harlem Shuffle” in 2014, before writing his next two novels, 2016’s “ The Underground Railroad” and 2019’s “ The Nickel Boys” - serious books full of trauma and devastation that won unprecedented back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes. “I like writing about American history and race, I like writing about the City, I like writing about pop culture, and I like telling jokes - but all those elements don’t always fit into this or that book,” he says, speaking on the phone from New York. Social unrest, crackerjack scene-setting, a perfectly timed laugh: This is Whitehead distilled, in a way we haven’t seen in a while. I’m like, damn, this riot stuff will cramp a brother’s style.’” Clutching a briefcase full of misbegotten booty, Freddie recounts his experience trying to get a sandwich in the middle of the ruckus: “‘People running up and down, screaming. “Cool It Baby,” one of three connected stories that make up Colson Whitehead’s new novel, “ Harlem Shuffle,” opens in the aftermath of this eruption, when furniture dealer/fence Ray Carney receives a visit from his ne’er-do-well cousin Freddie.

In Harlem during the summer of 1964, a white police officer shot and killed a Black 15-year-old boy in front of more than a dozen witnesses, setting off six nights of rioting across the neighborhood. If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from, whose fees support independent bookstores.

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