As the May 2010 issue of the Believer arrives, the magazine announced that Percival Everett has won the fifth annual Believer Book Award for his novel, I Am Not Sidney Poitier. It is Everett’s seventeenth novel.
Read more here, including an excerpt from the novel:”With a name like a Zen koan, Not Sidney creates a ripple of paradox in the heart of racist America. He does not redefine race relations and is not one the greatest actors of his generation, but he can hypnotize unsuspecting friends, seductive teachers, and fellow prisonmates–through a self-created technique called Fesmerism. I Am Not Sidney Poitier is a model of capturing satire without cynicism. Everett refers to his Not-Hero as his ‘fighter of windmills’ and, like Cervantes, absurdity is his best defense against the unfightable, unjustifiable nonsense of culture.”
Full disclosure: This GalleyCat editor has written for the The Believer.