ChainGang

Chain-Gang All-Stars is an exuberant circus of a novel, action-packed and expansive, almost too much to process. It plays out in a dystopian US just a shuffle-step from the norm, where predominantly Black prisoners fight not just for the entertainment of a primetime TV audience but, indirectly, for the reader’s benefit too. The narrative explodes in all directions. The tale at the centre is sometimes obscured. The book is unruly and knowingly compromised but it comes fuelled by a sense of thrilling, righteous rage.Nana…

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars comes to publication freighted with hype because of its stark envisioning of American death row prisoners forced to fight one another to the bloody end, with the bouts televised. The prisoners are mainly Black and they become stars in the entertainment industry on the “outside”, with gimmicky names and basic, almost caveman-like signature weapons. Instead of the Norse god Thor’s hammer Mjölnir, here there’s a hammer called Hass Omaha, a scythe named LoveGuile and a mace…