Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction
A New York Times Editors' choice
A Washington Post 50 Notable Fiction Selection
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year
Praise for The Awkward Black Man:
“The title of Mosley’s latest story collection, “The Awkward Black Man,” is both a spot-on descriptor and yet one that only hints at the broad range of people we find in the book’s pages…Reading these stories, you feel as if you’re sitting with a gifted storyteller while he spins yarns about the strange people living in his mind. The prolific Mosley delights in the wonderfully bizarre…Each protagonist seems simple and often shallow on the surface, but as the story progresses he unfurls into greater and frankly breathtaking complexity.”—New York Times
“Mr. Mosley is a famous crime writer, but this collection is nearer to the recent work of Julian Barnes and Roddy Doyle…In practiced, plainspoken prose, [Mosley] presents a gallery of old men facing divorce, illness or perhaps some more unnamable crisis of existence…The humble stories befit their soft-spoken antiheroes.”—Wall Street Journal
“Mosley might be best known for his mystery series featuring Easy Rawlins, but in these short stories, we see the prolific author as a chronicler of Black life in America. As he overturns stereotypes and focuses on individual characters, Mosley asks us not to look away from men who are isolated and awkward, but to see them as human beings in full.”—Washington Post
“Seventeen bold stories of brokenhearted Black men…The stories are tinged with sardonic humor and acerbic observations, many echoing the pained, bristling voices of Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin.”—New Yorker
“The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal. The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Despite the trailblazing work of writers such as Toni Morrison and more recently Edward P. Jones, James McBride, and Colson Whitehead, correcting the canon is an ongoing effort. In the brilliant and bracing The Awkward Black Man, Mosley has given us food for the journey.”—Alta
“These stories tap into the vulnerability and indignity of the human condition, but also its remarkable, even irrational, commitment to hope.”—Buzzfeed
“Mosley delivers a vibrant collection of 17 luminous stories, many with a focus on downtrodden and troubled protagonists…Each entry is a testament to Mosley’s enduring literary power.”—Publishers Weekly
“The Awkward Black Man” is a treasury of unsung lives, vignettes of the loves of unloved, praise of people who are out of place and time but not out of mind or mortality. . . True to his mystery tradition, these stories are tiny murders of the soul, things that are seldom told from this point of view, showing the insight and talent of Walter Mosley.”—New City Lit
“Walter Mosley is the kind of storyteller that makes his characters’ worst days into something you can recognize and relate to…Fans of Mosley don’t need to be told twice to go find this book. Just go. If you’re new to Mosley but you love short stories, though, The Awkward Black Man might be the best book for your life right now.”—North Dallas Gazette (syndicated)
“The Mosley voices cover the spectrum from dumb despair to sublime wisdom, from sexual intimacy to orgasms on the Staten Island Ferry. The cities are old, and the jobs are ordinary, but he discovers ways to find some truths and show how all life can play out.”—Bookreporter.com
“The cool Black guy stereotype is shattered in this collective of stories about Black men saddled with as much humanity as the rest of us. Follow nerds, weirdos, dorks and oddballs as they take the stage as heroes of their own stories.”—Essence
“These 17 old and more recent stories...feature distinctive characters, plus Mosley's jazzy prose and extraordinary insights. It's a tender, sad and gripping collection.”—AARP
“Since Walter Mosley published his first book, Devil in a Blue Dress, in 1990, he’s been exposing, dismantling and subverting stereotypes. Race, ethnicity, gender, class — he’s brought a fresh and discerning eye to all of them, in the midst of writing beautifully crafted fiction and thoughtful nonfiction…He does all that again in his new short story collection, The Awkward Black Man.”—Tampa Bay Times
“This autumn, Mosley will be awarded the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, which follows the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award and the Harold Washington Literary Prize for the author of more than 50 books, including his bestselling Easy Rawlins mystery series. As if to underscore the range of his incredible talent, he is publishing an excellent collection of short stories—17 first-person narratives that wrestle in distinctive ways with the experiences of Black men.”—National Book Review
“Fifty-plus books into his career, Mosley hasn't run out of inspired plots, and his interest in social issues remains acute, although he editorializes with the lightest of touches; The Awkward Black Man teems with sharp, quippy dialogue and not a sentence suffers the indignity of a frill…This primo story collection by an author best known for his crime fiction reaffirms his place in the literary pantheon.”—Shelf Awareness
“Master storyteller Mosley has created a beautiful collection about Black men who are, indeed, awkward in their poignant humanity…Mosley's is an essential American voice and his portraits of Black men will have profound resonance.” —Booklist (starred review)
Praise for Walter Mosley:
“When reviewing a book by Walter Mosley, it’s hard not to simply quote all the great lines. There are so many of them. You want to share the pleasures of Mosley’s jazz-inflected dialogue and the moody, descriptive passages reminiscent of Raymond Chandler at his best.” ―Washington Post, on Down the River Unto the Sea
“A daring, beautifully wrought story that incorporates elements of allegory, meditative reflection and the lilt of lyric tragedy.” ―Los Angeles Times, on The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
“With Mosley, there’s always the surprise factor―a cutting image or a bracing line of dialogue.” ―New York Times Book Review, on And Sometimes I Wonder About You
“Mosley’s invigorating, staccato prose and understanding of racial, moral and social subtleties are in full force.” ―Seattle Times, on Known to Evil
“Mosley is the Gogol of the African-American working class―the chronicler par excellence of the tragic and the absurd.” ―Vibe
“[Mosley] has a special talent for touching upon these sticky questions of evil and responsibility without getting stuck in them.” ―New Yorker
★ 2020-09-02
A grandmaster of the hard-boiled crime genre shifts gears to spin bittersweet and, at times, bizarre tales about bruised, sensitive souls in love and trouble.
In one of the 17 stories that make up this collection, a supporting character says: “People are so afraid of dying that they don’t even live the little bit of life they have.” She casually drops this gnomic observation as a way of breaking down a lead character’s resistance to smoking a cigarette. But her aphorism could apply to almost all the eponymous awkward Black men examined with dry wit and deep empathy by the versatile and prolific Mosley, who takes one of his occasional departures from detective fiction to illuminate the many ways Black men confound society’s expectations and even perplex themselves. There is, for instance, Rufus Coombs, the mailroom messenger in “Pet Fly,” who connects more easily with household pests than he does with the women who work in his building. Or Albert Roundhouse, of “Almost Alyce,” who loses the love of his life and falls into a welter of alcohol, vagrancy, and, ultimately, enlightenment. Perhaps most alienated of all is Michael Trey in “Between Storms,” who locks himself in his New York City apartment after being traumatized by a major storm and finds himself taken by the outside world as a prophet—not of doom, but, maybe, peace? Not all these awkward types are hapless or benign: The short, shy surgeon in “Cut, Cut, Cut” turns out to be something like a mad scientist out of H.G. Wells while “Showdown on the Hudson” is a saga about an authentic Black cowboy from Texas who’s not exactly a perfect fit for New York City but is soon compelled to do the right thing, Western-style. The tough-minded and tenderly observant Mosley style remains constant throughout these stories even as they display varied approaches from the gothic to the surreal.
The range and virtuosity of these stories make this Mosley’s most adventurous and, maybe, best book.
