{"product_id":"the-broken-king-an-extraordinary-read-guardian-1","title":"The Broken King: 'An Extraordinary Read' Guardian","description":"‘There’s a bridge of beautiful American prose—lyrical, powerful, fearlessly candid—running straight from James Baldwin to Thomas, who is obviously Baldwin’s worthy heir . . . An utterly immersive book’\u003cb\u003e Francisco Goldman, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMonkey Boy\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the author of \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eMan Gone Down\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e—a \u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eTop Ten Book of the Year and winner of the Dublin Literary Award—comes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel \u003ci\u003eMan Gone Down\u003c\/i\u003e, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called “powerful and moving . . . an impressive success,” by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas’ debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, \u003ci\u003eThe Broken King\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe title is borrowed from T.S. Eliot’s line in “Little Gidding”: “If you came at night like a broken king,” and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin’s \u003ci\u003eThe Fire Next Time \u003c\/i\u003eor Nabokov’s \u003ci\u003eSpeak, Memory\u003c\/i\u003e, Thomas’ memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father—a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of \u003ci\u003eThe Broken King \u003c\/i\u003eis the story of Thomas’ own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with “the house of Beckett.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEvery page of \u003ci\u003eThe Broken King \u003c\/i\u003erings with the impact of America’s sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind’s journey into and out of madness.","brand":"Simon \u0026 Schuster","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46081766195391,"sku":"9781398562226","price":24.74,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0614\/1689\/8751\/files\/461874-de9d4f8e10c3e697f05f30adfc64f441e9686e5e7d125d63e284f0aae4898eb9.jpg?v=1787572431","url":"https:\/\/www.popweasel.co.nz\/products\/the-broken-king-an-extraordinary-read-guardian-1","provider":"Pop Weasel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}