The Ballad of Black Tom

This ingenious recasting of an H.P. Lovecraft classic is as creepy as it is thought-provoking. * People *
The Ballad of Black Tom stands on its own as a compelling weird tale of Jazz-age New York City, but its penetrating examination of Lovecraft’s creations and how they reflect racism’s profound influence on our cultural imagination is where it really shines. * Slate *
Ingenious… darkly witty… The writing is full of rage and passion: love for the vanished culture of 1920s Harlem and love — conflicted — for crazy Lovecraft. * New York Times *
LaValle’s novella of sorcery and skullduggery in Jazz Age New York is a magnificent example of what weird fiction can and should do. * Laird Barron, author of The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All *
Holds all the horror of the cosmic void that has made the Lovecraft mythos such an enduring cultural artifact, placing it deftly amid the very real terrors of life for a young black man in a racist society. * Metastellar *
LaValle cleverly subverts Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos by imbuing a black man with the power to summon the Old Ones, and creates genuine chills with his evocation of the monstrous Sleeping King. * Elizabeth Hand, author of A Haunting on the Hill *
LaValle has taken Lovecraft’s most notorious tale and reframed it for us as an even more horrifying story, exceptionally well-written with the utmost attention to detail… The horrors of the story are both real and imagined for the reader, as we confront racism head-first with some nasty dealings in the arcane arts designed to wake up the sleeping ‘Elder Gods’. * This Is Horror *

Victor LaValle is the author of eight works of fiction: five novels, two novellas, and a collection of short stories. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, an American Book Award, two Bram Stoker Awards, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the Key to Southeast Queens. His novels have been included in best-of-the-year lists by the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, The Nation, and Publishers Weekly, among others. The Devil in Silver is soon to be a major TV series. He lives in the Bronx with his wife and kids and teaches at Columbia University.

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