The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated from the Library of John C. Calhoun

WINNER OF THE 2020 IPPY AWARD IN MOST ORIGINAL CONCEPT

Percival Everett’s The Book of Training by Colonel Hap Thompson of Roanoke, VA, 1843, Annotated From the Library of John C. Calhoun, is poetry within the harsh confines of a mock historical document, a guidebook for the American slave owner. The collection features lists of instructions for buying, training, and punishing, equations for calculating present and future profits, and handwritten annotations affirming the brutal contents. The Book of Training lays bare the mechanics of the peculiar institution of slavery and challenges readers to place themselves in the uncomfortable vantage point of those who have bought and enslaved human beings.

“. . . Artful and literate, Everett explores the philosophical, the metaphysical, the physical and the psychological boundaries of human life . . .”
—Terry D Auray

“. . . Everett achieves a primal sense of dislocation, forcing us to question how we determine the limits of the human . . .”
—Sven Birkets, The New York Times

“. . . The audacious, uncategorizable Everett. He mixes genre and tone with absolute abandon, never does the same song twice. Brilliant . . .”
—The Boston Globe

“. . . An author who dances with language as effortlessly as Fred Astaire.”
—Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael