Soul City: A Novel - Softcover

Touré

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0312425163 ISBN 13: 9780312425166

Publisher: Picador, 2005

Synopsis

Welcome to Soul City, where roses bloom in the cracks of the sidewalk, musical genres become political platforms, and children use their allowance money to buy records from the Vinyl Man. It's an unusually peaceful and magical American community with a strong heritage and sense of unity--at least, that's how journalist Cadillac Jackson first finds it when he visits the city for a magazine story. It isn't long before a mayoral campaign turns hostile; Cadillac falls hard for Mahogany Sunflower and is taught how to shed his embattled African-American identity so that he, too, might become a resident of this fabled city. What he discovers reveals as much about himself as it does about human nature and the meaning of race in America.

About this title

About the Author

Touré is the author of the story collection The Portable Promised Land. He's also CNN's pop culture correspondent and a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Tennis Magazine, The Best American Essays, The Best American Sportswriting, The Best American Erotica, and DaCapo Best American Music Writing.

From Publishers Weekly

In a swamp of political mudslinging tomes, this charming and quirky fairy tale for grownups comes as a restful change. Stem-cell clashes? Foreign policy? Forget it. The mayoral race in Soul City hinges on one issue and one issue only: which candidate will make the best DJ, pumping the hippest music into the speakers that hang from every lamppost in the city. The citizens of this grooving utopia, which boasts "more mojo than any city in the world," are entirely separated from the rest of America, and they like it that way; it leaves them free to devour Granmama's biscuits by the bushel, drive around in cars that play only the driver's favorite singer, and attend St. Pimp's House of Baptist Rapture. When Cadillac Jackson, a journalist from Chocolate City magazine, arrives to write an article about the election, he promptly falls in love with the seductive Mahogany Sunflower, but even more so with the city itself—the only place left in America where black really is beautiful. Imaginative, buoyant and slyly funny, this satire by magazine writer Touré (The Portable Promised Land) is a delight to read and a pleasure to hum along to.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0312425163
• ISBN 13: 9780312425166
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192