Skip to main content

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Biography

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times bestselling author of CHAIN-GANG ALL STARS and 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.

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Books by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Chain-Gang All-Stars
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Dystopian, Fiction, Satire

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. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games.

Friday Black: Stories
by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Fiction, Short Stories

By placing ordinary characters in extraordinary situations, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah reveals the violence, injustice and painful absurdities that black men and women contend with every day in this country. These stories tackle urgent instances of racism and cultural unrest, and explore the many ways we fight for humanity in an unforgiving world. In “The Finkelstein Five,” Adjei-Brenyah gives us an unforgettable reckoning of the brutal prejudice of our justice system. In “Zimmer Land,” we see a far-too-easy-to-believe imagining of racism as sport. And “Friday Black” and “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King” show the horrors of consumerism and the toll it takes on us all.