The Broken King
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES’S 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD
“There’s a bridge of beautiful American prose—lyrical, powerful, fearlessly candid—running straight from James Baldwin to Thomas, who is obviously Baldwin’s worthy heir . . . An utterly immersive book.”—Francisco Goldman, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Monkey Boy
From the author of Man Gone Down—a New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award—comes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men
In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel Man Gone Down, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called “powerful and moving . . . an impressive success,” by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Thomas’ debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, The Broken King, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir.
The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot’s line in “Little Gidding”: “If you came at night like a broken king,” and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time or Nabokov’s Speak, Memory, Thomas’ memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father—a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of The Broken King is the story of Thomas’ own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with “the house of Beckett.”
Every page of The Broken King rings with the impact of America’s sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind’s journey into and out of madness.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Novelist Thomas (Man Gone Down) makes his nonfiction debut with a haunting and poetic profile of the men in his family. In an effort to untangle his identity as "a hard man" prone to depression, anger, and intolerance, Thomas considers his own life in relationship to that of his distant father, Dave; his older brother, David; and his two sons, Alex and Miles. He drifts from memories of Red Sox fandom and racist microaggressions while growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to reflections on his own parenting style, admitting that his hubristic obsession with language and aesthetics—inherited from his father—have made him "at best a brooding malcontent" who "may have made for an interesting dinner guest," but was "a lousy father." David emerges as a particularly fascinating figure, a charismatic "combination of the Jello Pudding Bill Cosby and Satan," who floats in and out of Thomas's life, struggling with addiction and sometimes stealing from his younger brother after his cons and faulty business ideas go awry. Gradually, Thomas's memories and reflections accumulate into a poignant and potent mosaic, chronicling his attempts to overcome family dysfunction and fumble his way toward stability. It's a stirring achievement.
