James McBride is the author of the award-winning New York Times bestsellers, The Color of Water and The Good Lord Bird, which is currently being made into a television series starring Ethan Hawke. A former reporter for The Washington Post and People magazine, McBride holds a Masters degree in journalism from Columbia University and a B.A. from Oberlin College. In 2015 he was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Barack Obama.
Peopled with wondrously quirky and charismatic individuals...both hilarious and affecting, the patter a treat, and in wise, drunk, old Sportcoat James McBride has given us a character for the ages. * BIG ISSUE * Dazzling, spiritually rich. * OPRAH magazine * Deacon King Kong cements McBride as a master storyteller. * SHELF AWARENESS * McBride is operating in the realm of social allegory, a lineage that extends back through generations of writers: Ralph Ellison, Terry Southern, Darius James. Like them, he telegraphs his intentions through the use - or better yet, the reinvention - of history, which as Deacon King Kong progresses becomes a kind of floating opera, touching but not always overlapping with events as they occurred. * LA TIMES * Perhaps you wouldn't expect your next great read to be a sort of comic opera set in a Brooklyn housing project circa 1969 starring a drink-addled church deacon named Sportcoat, his best friend Hot Sausage and a melancholic amateur gardener with mafia ties known as the Elephant. Best put on your seat belt, because McBride (The Good Lord Bird, Five-Carat Soul) will take you on a fast, funny, farcical ride. * WASHINGTON POST * Hilarious...A rich and vivid multicultural history. * TIME * Deacon King Kong reaffirms James McBride's position among the greatest American storytellers of our time. * BOOKPAGE * Deacon King Kong is full of heart, humor, and compassion...I say we give him another National Book Award for this one. It's that good. * NPR * The sheer volume of invention in Deacon King Kong commands awe...And the sentences! The prose radiates a kind of chain-reaction energy. * NEW YORKER *