Erasure by Percival Everett

Percival Everett's Erasure is a blistering satire about race and writing Thelonious "Monk" Ellison's writing career has bottomed out: his latest manuscript has been rejected by seventeen publishers, which stings all the more because his previous novels have been "critically acclaimed." He seethes on the sidelines of the literary establishment as he watches the meteoric success of We's Lives in Da Ghetto, a first novel by a woman who once visited "some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days." Meanwhile, Monk struggles with real family tragedies—his aged mother is fast succumbing to Alzheimer's, and he still grapples with the reverberations of his father's suicide seven years before. In his rage and despair, Monk dashes off a novel meant to be an indictment of Juanita Mae Jenkins's bestseller. He doesn't intend for My Pafology to be published, let alone taken seriously, but it is—under the pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh—and soon it becomes the Next Big Thing. How Monk deals with the personal and professional fallout galvanizes this audacious, hysterical, and quietly devastating novel.

- Google

The 1829th greatest fiction book of all time


This book is on the following lists:

  1. - 6th on A Premature Attempt at the 21st Century Canon (Vulture)

Buy This Book

Name Binding Sales Rank Lowest New Lowest Used Published
X (Spanish Edition) Hardcover 18191572 $21.61 2011
Erasure Paperback 2420187 $29.28 $1.76 2002
Erasure Hardcover 1631358 $13.37 $3.96 2003
Erasure: A Novel Hardcover 1950157 $25.00 $4.01 2001
Erasure Hardcover 7128183 $2.37
Erasure: A Novel Paperback 127604 $11.09 $4.75 2011
Erasure: A Novel Kindle Edition 153389 $9.99 2011