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A review by angelayoung
Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
4.0
The stories in Friday Black are terrifying. Terrifying beautiful. Terrifyingly shocking. Terrifyingly possible.
In the first story, The Finkelstein Five, a white man, accused of cutting off the heads of five black children with a chainsaw, is acquitted in a series of increasingly ridiculous (but horrendously possible) white-led court scenes, while the innocent black children lie dead. In Zimmer Land black volunteers put on flexible armour so that white punters can shoot and 'kill' them: this, as another reviewer said, is 'racism as sport'. And three of the stories, including the title story Friday Black are set in enormous hangar-like clothes shops where the customers are willing to / think it quite normal to fight to the death for clothes while the shop assistants are armed with long poles to keep them at bay.
Adjei-Brenyah spins his terrible tales with limitless imagination and effortless writing. They should be read for those reasons and as a warning.
In the first story, The Finkelstein Five, a white man, accused of cutting off the heads of five black children with a chainsaw, is acquitted in a series of increasingly ridiculous (but horrendously possible) white-led court scenes, while the innocent black children lie dead. In Zimmer Land black volunteers put on flexible armour so that white punters can shoot and 'kill' them: this, as another reviewer said, is 'racism as sport'. And three of the stories, including the title story Friday Black are set in enormous hangar-like clothes shops where the customers are willing to / think it quite normal to fight to the death for clothes while the shop assistants are armed with long poles to keep them at bay.
Adjei-Brenyah spins his terrible tales with limitless imagination and effortless writing. They should be read for those reasons and as a warning.