Serious Music (Pre-Order March 2nd)

Serious Music by Percival Everett (Pre-Order March 2nd) 

A brilliant Black musician. A country in upheaval. And a journey through the defining moments of twentieth-century America.

In 1918, Arthur Champion is one of only a handful of Black students at the prestigious Oberlin Conservatory of Music. But after running afoul of a vindictive professor, Arthur's promising future is abruptly derailed when he is forced into the United States Army.

From the trenches of the Somme to the jazz clubs of Harlem and eventually the inner circles of Woodrow Wilson's White House, Arthur's extraordinary journey carries him through a decade of profound social and political change. Along the way, he encounters artists, soldiers, politicians, and institutions that force him to confront questions of race, power, ownership, and who gets to claim credit for American art.

Sweeping in scope and sharply funny, Serious Music is both an exhilarating historical adventure and a penetrating examination of the ways Black artists have shaped—and been exploited by—the cultural landscape around them.

From Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning author Percival Everett, Serious Music is a bold, darkly comic novel about music, ambition, racism, and the complicated relationship between art and ownership.