Adjei-Brenyah, Nana Kwame
Entry updated 17 February 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1991- ) US author who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Finkelstein 5" in Printer's Row for July 2016, which was assembled with other early work in Friday Black (coll 2018). The conspicuously gonzo intensity of his short fiction is intensified in the pounding, pyrotechnic narrative strategies that drive his first novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars (2023), set in a not-unfamiliar Near-Future carceral America, where convicted felons (see Crime and Punishment) can expiate their sentences by surviving gladiatorial combats-to-the-death livestreamed to the corrupted citizenry of the huge country (see Games and Sports; Race in SF). The seemingly over-the-top high tessitura of the tale is buttressed throughout by footnotes, some learned, designed to substantiate Adjei-Brenyah's description of the Prison culture of his native land, and in the light of which resemblances to Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games franchise seem superficial. [JC]
Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
born New York: 1991
works
- Chain-Gang All-Stars (New York: Pantheon Books, 2023) [hb/Kimberly Glyder]
collections and stories
- Friday Black (Mariner books, 2018) [coll: pb/]
links
previous versions of this entry