★已授權英、美、荷、義、土，5國語文
★奧斯卡得獎電影《美式小說》原著《擦除》作者最新著作

The thrilling and darkly comic journey of a Black musician in the 1920s making his way from the trenches of World War I to the no-less-dangerous terrain of Woodrow Wilson’s White House

In 1918, Arthur Champion is one of a handful of Black students attending Oberlin Conservatory. When his vindicative instructor spreads a rumor about his and his friend’s involvement with another student, a white woman, the two young men are involuntarily enlisted in the United States Army.

Plucked out by General “Black Jack” Pershing to accompany the 15th regiment to France, Arthur and his violin become part of a quartet sent to boost French morale in the trenches of the Somme as the war nears its bloody end. But mustard gas may be the least of his problems.

Also a gifted pianist, Arthur is recruited after the war to play the score for the infamously racist film The Birth of a Nation, first to American troops still stationed in France and then, in an attempt to replicate the results, to a hometown audience in Harlem. Each time he cuts into the music with his own subversive chords and interruptions, an auditory concoction that produces hilarity among the Black listeners and panic among the white ones.

Ducking for cover after racial tensions in New York erupt into violence, Arthur finds himself in Washington, DC, toiling as a gardener on the grounds of Woodrow Wilson’s White House. There, one final screening of The Birth of a Nation, beloved by the Southern-born president, may prove the unraveling of them all.

A sharp and timely examination of racism in art – who has been “allowed” harmony and who has been “relegated” to rhythm – Serious Music is an electrifying, page-turning novel about pursuing truth in spite of a hostile crowd, all told with Percival Everett’s brilliant insight, humanity, and humor.

 

Percival Everett is the author of over thirty books, including The Trees, which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and won the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and Erasure, which was adapted into the major Oscar-winning film American Fiction. He has received the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction, has been a Pulitzer Prize finalist, and is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller in hardback, James was a finalist for the 2024 Orwell Prize for Fiction, was shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and was named the Winner of the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. Percival Everett lives in Los Angeles.