Chain Gang All Stars

NATIONAL BESTSELLER - A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK - Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black

"Like Orwell's 1984 and Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Adjei-Brenyah's book presents a dystopian vision so...illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we're capable of doing." --The Washington Post

"This book will change you!...A masterpiece." --Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show's #ReadWithJenna

She felt their eyes, all those executioners...

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a "new and necessary American voice" (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).

Author: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Publisher: Pantheon Books
Published: 05/02/2023
Pages: 384
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.55lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.30w x 1.50d
ISBN: 9780593317334


Review Citation(s):
Kirkus Reviews 02/15/2023
Publishers Weekly 03/06/2023
Booklist 05/01/2023 pg. 17
Shelf Awareness 05/23/2023

About the Author
NANA KWAME ADJEI-BRENYAH is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black. His work has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Esquire, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He was a National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" honoree, the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award and the Saroyan Prize, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Award for Best First Book, along with many other honors. Raised in Spring Valley, New York, he now lives in the Bronx.