Serious Music
United States

Serious Music

by Percival Everett

Freedom & Resistance Historical Fiction 2027

Summary

In 1918, Arthur Champion is a gifted young Black music scholar studying at the Oberlin Conservatory when a vindictive professor sends his life in an unexpected direction: he is drafted into the US Army and shipped to the trenches of the First World War. Surviving the horrors of the Somme, Arthur begins a remarkable journey through the jazz clubs of Paris and Harlem, eventually reaching the White House of President Woodrow Wilson. Along the way, he discovers the transformative power of his musical voice in a society determined to deny him ownership of his own talent. Blending dark humour with historical drama, Percival Everett examines racism, artistic freedom, and the struggle to claim one’s place in a world shaped by prejudice.

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Country
United States
North America
About the author
Percival Everett
Percival Everett

Percival Everett is an acclaimed American novelist, short-story writer, and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. Born in 1956 in Fort Gordon, Georgia, and raised in Columbia, South Carolina, he studied philosophy at the University of Miami before completing graduate studies in creative writing at Brown University. Everett is celebrated for his intellectual range, experimental storytelling, sharp satire, and fearless exploration of race, identity, and American culture. His extensive body of work spans literary fiction, philosophical novels, mysteries, and Westerns. His novels include Erasure (2001), adapted into the Oscar-winning film American Fiction (2023), The Trees (2021), and James (2024), a radical reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. James won the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Everett has also received the Windham-Campbell Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, writer Danzy Senna, and their children.

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Details
Published
2027
Author
Percival Everett