MY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021 - BLACKLAND

“2044 in the year of our Lord”.

A race war between white and black America, precipitated by the assassination of the second black US President, has escalated to the use of nuclear weapons by the white army. Elsewhere (“elsewhen”?) an unemployed artist Jason Williams resolves to build the first African-American hydrogen bomb - the “Boom Shakalaka”. Or, at least, he builds the idea of “Da Bomb”; in this metaphysical masterpiece, nothing is really real - “the only thing that was real was that everything was FAKE”.

Exploring the logistics and possible consequences of his plan over the course of the story, while the overarching narrative brutally examines the Black experience, leads Jason to suddenly wake up in the fabled “Blackland”, a country without any white people, where he comes under the mentorship of one M. B. Asia, with whom he has an epic philosophical debate on the way to Liberty City, the seemingly Utopian capital city of Blackland. This leads to a darkly comic Kafka-esque meeting with the hidden security forces, and just when you think the book can’t get any better, the deeply profound ending takes your breath away.

I realise I am ineptly describing the plot because any attempt to describe this stunning book is doomed to failure. Sci-fi? Not really. The postmodern “Roots”? Possibly. I was not prepared for this book. A sentence towards the end of Chapter 5 nearly made me faint. There’s so much truth in this book, it’s almost painful. Prepare to be knocked senseless on every page.

Full of relentless energy and written in the kinetic, fluid, dense language of Black America, this is a powerful and vital work about the Black experience in a future USA, yet still recognisable as the world we live in now. A howl against racist “Amerikkka”, it is satirical, self-referential and fourth-wall shattering. But also very funny. “Blackland” is the Black “Ulysses” - it even ends with “Un huh”, a postmodern reinvention of Molly Bloom’s final, exultant “Yes”. According to the closing author’s note, “Blackland” took twenty-five years to write; I can think of no better way to spend a quarter of a century. This is a work to be read and read again. If this book isn’t declared a masterpiece, there’s no justice in the world. Which is what the book is actually about.