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John Woman

Audiobook
2 of 2 copies available
2 of 2 copies available

A convention-defying novel by bestselling writer Walter Mosley, John Woman recounts the transformation of an unassuming boy named Cornelius Jones into John Woman, an unconventional history professor―while the legacy of a hideous crime lurks in the shadows.

At twelve years old, Cornelius, the son of an Italian-American woman and an older black man from Mississippi named Herman, secretly takes over his father's job at a silent film theater in New York's East Village. Five years later, as Herman lives out his last days, he shares his wisdom with his son, explaining that the person who controls the narrative of history controls their own fate.

After his father dies and his mother disappears, Cornelius sets about reinventing himself―as Professor John Woman, a man who will spread Herman's teachings into the classrooms of his unorthodox southwestern university and beyond. But there are other individuals who are attempting to influence the narrative of John Woman and who might know something about the facts of his hidden past.

Engaging with some of the most provocative ideas of recent intellectual history, John Woman is a compulsively readable, deliciously unexpected novel about the way we tell stories and whether the stories we tell have the power to change the world.

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    • Publisher's Weekly

      July 2, 2018
      In Mosley’s offbeat and insightful novel (following Down the River unto the Sea), 16-year-old New Yorker Cornelius “CC” Jones—the brilliant son of an Italian-American flirt and an older black autodidact—spends his evenings in the early 1990s working his father’s job in a downtown theater while his father is ill at home. One night, in a moment of violence, CC kills the theater’s landlord; the crime will haunt him forever. He soon leaves New York under the new identity of John Woman and goes on to study at elite universities, creating a new intellectual movement around the unreliable nature of history. His skills and area of expertise lead him to the New University of the Southwest, a liberal college funded and staffed by members of a mysterious organization known as the Platinum Path, who have taken quite the interest in John and in the defining moments of his childhood and true past. Fast paced but still full of provocative questions about society, the story grounds the wilder aspects of its plot by providing a fascinating cast of endearing characters. Mosley’s novel is one to savor, and an unpredictable, unabashedly strange good time. Agent: Gloria Loomis, Watkins Loomis Agency.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Dion Graham expressively narrates this mind-bending departure from Walter Mosley, best known for his Easy Rawlins detective series. The story features a history professor named John Woman, who has a mysterious past involving a hidden crime. As a teen, Woman was named Cornelius Jones. When his father's health declines and his father's boss is murdered, young Cornelius assumes the identity he calls John Woman. This novel is metafiction that asks questions about the relationship between history and who is telling its stories, and Graham's outstanding narration captures its continually shifting tones. The conflicting realities of the many characters Graham takes on create an atmosphere of unreliability in this dark, riveting audiobook. T.E.C. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

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  • English

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