The Nickel Boys Colson Whitehead by Colson Whitehead 9780345804341, 0345804341, B07J489X7H instant download after payment.

"Inspired by disclosures of a real-life Florida reform school’s long-standing corruption and abusive practices, Whitehead’s novel displays its author’s facility with violent imagery and his skill at weaving narrative strands into an ingenious if disquieting whole."  -  Kirkus Reviews

When Elwood Curtis, a black boy growing up in 1960s Tallahassee, is unfairly sentenced to a juvenile reformatory called the Nickel Academy, he finds himself trapped in a grotesque chamber of horrors. Elwood’s only salvation is his friendship with fellow “delinquent” Turner, which deepens despite Turner’s conviction that Elwood is hopelessly naive, that the world is crooked, and that the only way to survive is to scheme and avoid trouble. 

As life at the Academy becomes ever more perilous, the tension between Elwood’s ideals and Turner’s scepticism leads to a decision whose repercussions will echo down the decades. 

"The Nickel Boys - a tense, nervy performance - is even more rigorously controlled than its predecessor... The ordinary language, the clear pane of his prose, lets the stories speak for themselves... while Whitehead is frank about the barbarity his characters endure, there are few scenes of explicit violence... And none of the violence is exaggerated."  -  Parul Sehgal, The New York Times

Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and warped the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is a devastating, driven narrative that showcases a great American novelist and “should further cement Whitehead as one of his generation's best" (Entertainment Weekly).

Winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize For Fiction