Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel (Unabridged)
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4.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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).
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s brilliant and bloody dystopian thriller serves up a blistering condemnation of capital punishment. Lovers Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are essentially reality stars, locked in a prison that has turned incarceration into a “hard-action sport.” Criminals compete to the death for both their freedom and the amusement of American audiences, who binge-watch these showdowns with a disturbing ambivalence toward the fate and humanity of even the most popular gladiators. A full cast—made up of Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch, and Lee Osorio—offers up a truly incredible performance with expressive, captivating narration that brings the listener right into the action without losing the nuance of Adjei-Brenyah’s writing. Building toward an epic, inevitable matchup, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a cry for compassion that should reverberate against the walls of our profit-driven justice system.
