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Chain Gang All Stars
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Shayna Small, Aaron Goodson, Michael Crouch, Lee Osorio
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
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Publisher's Summary
A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Friday Black • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE
A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Elle, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, Kirkus Reviews
“Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so…illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing.”—The Washington Post
“This book is so good. Brutal subject matter, beautiful writing. This one is from the heart.”—Stephen King
She felt their eyes, all those executioners…
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America’s increasingly dominant private prison industry. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.
In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE’s corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar’s path have devastating consequences.
Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system’s unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a “new and necessary American voice” (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).
What the critics say
*Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction*
*One of the New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year*
*Finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards*
*Longlisted for the New American Voices Awards*
*Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize*
*Longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize*
*Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction*
*Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize*
Named A Best Book of the Year by:
New York Times Book Review, NPR, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Elle, Esquire, the New York Public Library, Goodreads, Book Riot, Polygon, Financial Times, Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, Shelf Awareness, Readers Digest, Electric Literature, WBEZ's Nerdette, The Globe and Mail, The Messenger, Library Journal, and The Northforker
*May Selection for The Today Show’s Read With Jenna Book Club*
*Roxane Gay’s May Selection for the Audacious Book Club*
*A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice*
*New York Times Notable Book of the Year*
“This book will change you!...A masterpiece.”—Jenna Bush Hager, The Today Show’s #ReadWithJenna
“An act of protest…in a voice that belongs only to Adjei-Brenyah, who bends the lurid into the lyrical—pretty words about hideous deeds. Some of his best fight sentences sound as if Joe Rogan had fallen into a trance and assumed the diction and rhythms of Toni Morrison. If you recoil at that unholy fusion, that’s kind of the point; and the author keeps pulling off this shock, page after page…There’s more than a little George Saunders in these high jinks…The novel is a thorough display of authorial control…As the plot careers forward, Adjei-Brenyah uses footnotes as tethers between fiction and reality, reminding us that his gladiatorial farce is just a little tragicomic leap from an extant American horror…The society in which [these characters] live defines them by their worst deeds, but the writer of this novel refuses to.”—New York Times Book Review
“Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so upsetting and illuminating that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and what we’re capable of doing…So raw and tragic and primal is Chain-Gang All-Stars that despite its futuristic elements, it has the patina of some timeworn epic…Shockingly intimate and moving.”—Washington Post
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What listeners say about Chain Gang All Stars
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- Anonymous User
- 2023-12-28
awesome
I had an incredible time listening to this book. loved the split character chapters and the voice actors, I took a chance on the premise and I'm happy I did. a great title!
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- Adela
- 2023-06-08
Got boring quick
I thought I would be captivated by the story when I read what the book was about… But I just found it really boring. I didn’t even finish the last three hours of the story. Just wasn’t into it. Performances were great, but story was boring.
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- Greg Moore
- 2023-10-07
Really wanted to like it
I thought the story would pick up, but it just continued to be difficult to feel invested in the characters or any outcome. I couldn’t finish it.
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