A "razor-sharp debut from an urgent new voice of fiction," (NPR) about a father's obsessive quest to protect his son-even if it means turning him white.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is a recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction and was the winner of the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for Novel-in-Progress. His work has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, Kenyon Review, Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City- A New Orleans Atlas. A native of New Orleans, he is a graduate of the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and a member of the Peauxdunque Writers Alliance.
“We Cast a Shadow asks some of the most important questions
fiction can ask, and it does so with energetic and acrobatic prose,
hilarious wordplay and great heart. . . . Love is at the core of
this funny, beautiful novel . . . . At any moment, Ruffin can
summon the kind of magic that makes you want to slow down, reread
and experience the pleasure of him crystallizing an image again. .
. . Read this book.”—Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, The New York
Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“Set in the post-post-racial South, We Cast a
Shadow tells the story of a man—one of the few black men at
his law firm—desperate to pay for his biracial son to undergo
demelanization, desperate to ‘fix’ what he sees as his son’s fatal
flaw. It is this desperation that haunts this novel and, in this
desperation, we see just how pernicious racism is, how irrevocably
it can alter how a man sees the world, himself, and those he loves.
It is a chilling, unforgettable cautionary tale, and one we should
all read and heed.”—Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
“We Cast a Shadow is like a dispatch from the frontlines of
the African-American psyche. Written with ruthless
intelligence, it’s the story of a father’s love and how he tries to
protect his son in a country that devours black lives through
violence, incarceration, and poverty. . . . [Ruffin] can drive
his story to the outer limits and beyond, and never lose the
threads of bitter reality that make it so haunting. We Cast a
Shadow soars on Ruffin’s unerring vision.”—Renée
Graham, The Boston Globe
“Stunning and audacious . . . at once a pitch-black comedy, a
chilling horror story and an endlessly perceptive novel about the
possible future of race in America. . . . Ruffin proves to
be a master . . . a fast-paced and intricately plotted book .
. . The real draw of the novel is Ruffin’s gift at creating
unforgettable characters. . . . He writes with a straight face,
never in love with his own cleverness—there are echoes of
Ralph Ellison’s intelligent, unshowy prose. . . . There’s no doubt
that We Cast a Shadow, with its sobering look at race in
America, can be difficult to read, but it’s more than worth
it. . . . It’s a razor-sharp debut from an urgent
new voice of fiction.”—NPR
“Heart-wrenching and morally ambiguous . . .
a challenging, thought-provoking debut.”—Minneapolis Star
Tribune
“Ruffin’s name is the talk of the literary world.”—The
Times-Picayune
“Inventive and shocking . . . One of the most
anticipated debut novels of 2019.”—Los Angeles Times
“A biting satire of anti-blackness in the US.”—BuzzFeed
“A full-throated novelistic debut of ferocious power and grace . .
. a story that refracts the insanity of the world into a shape so
unique you wonder how this book wasn’t there all along.”—Lit
Hub
“Propulsive . . . We Cast a Shadow proves that the
eeriest works of speculative fiction are those that hit closest to
home.”—Vulture
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