The Trees

The Trees is a wild book: a gory pulp revenge fantasy and a detective narrative...[It] is just as blood-soaked and just as hilarious as Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained, but it comes with more authentic historical weight for being set in a dreamlike counterpresent.

Bookforum

‘A bitingly funny, boldly satirical, deadly serious tale of racism and the legacy of injustice.’

Economist

‘A page-turner with a sharp, provocative edge, as it harks back to the real-life murder of the young Emmett Till, it has important things to say about race.’

2022 Booker Prize judges’ report

‘In The Trees, Everett’s enormous talent for wordplay―the kind that provokes laughter and the kind that gut-punches―is at its peak…He makes a revenge fantasy into a comic horror masterpiece. He turns narrative stakes into moral stakes and raises them sky-high. Readers will laugh until it hurts.’

Los Angeles Times

‘Uproarious and grisly…Everett forces readers to confront atrocities endured by Black Americans in this briskly paced hybrid of whodunit, madcap comedy, and horror story…It’s a testament to Everett’s immense skill as a writer that he is able to take such grim material and make it hilarious, poignant, and infuriating.’

Michael Magras, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

‘The Trees is unlike any other. Everett draws from a series of genres―literary novel, police procedural, horror―to create a book that’s both unique and difficult to describe. It’s a delicate balancing act that he pulls off masterfully, another brilliant book by one of the most essential authors in American literature.’

Michael Schaub, Alta Journal

‘Everett is going for an unstable cocktail of broad parody, mystery and social justice, and the result feels thrillingly volatile, and brave, a swing at a new kind of novel on American violence.’

Chris Borrelli, Chicago Tribune

‘This fierce satire is both deeply troubling and rewarding.’

Booklist

‘The Trees weaves tropes of pulp-cop noir with trademark acuity and genre-bending inventiveness to deliver a swift, startlingly expansive take on the legacy of lynching in the American South.’

Porter House Review

‘Percival Everett approaches genre like a veteran card shark does poker: methodically patient, rarely playing the same hand twice. His books—30 and counting—are full of ambition and mystery, each one of them sustained by a sense of existential wonder.’

Wired

‘This mordantly funny, twisted police procedural is both knockabout and deadly serious; a Booker-shortlisted page-turner that aims to make its reader stop short...Taking direct aim at America’s collective amnesia, this scabrous, rumbustious satire should appeal to fans of Carl Hiaasen and Colson Whitehead, but is boldly original.’

Sunday Times

‘Radical invention characterises Percival Everett’s devastatingly absurdist The Trees…It weaponises the genres of horror, comedy and detective fiction to lay open the history of lynching.’

Justine Jordan, Guardian (UK)