麻豆约拍

Elizabeth Day talks to Colson Whitehead in a special feature length interview. Twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for his novels The Underground Railway and The Nickel Boys, the writer has changed direction with his latest, Harlem Shuffle.
Part heist novel, part richly woven tapestry of New York social history, the novel begins in 1959 and runs to the Harlem riots of 1964. Recurring themes emerge racial injustice, corruption of power but this time his protagonist is an active agent. It follows the travails of Ray Carney, a furniture salesman with one foot in respectability and one in the city's underworld, as Whitehead writes "Carney was only slightly bent when it came to being crooked".

In the interview Colson Whitehead talks about his creative writing process, his reluctance to be a spokesman for black America and why he's stashed an unpublished novel in his bottom drawer for his children's inheritance.

Presenter: Elizabeth Day
Producer: Kirsten Locke
Image copyright: Michael Lionstar

Book List

Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead
Sag Harbour by Colson Whitehead
Ulysses by James Joyce