The Book of Numbers

In the hardboiled tradition of Chester Himes and Walter Mosely, Robert Deane Pharr's novel tells the tale of two black men, Dave and Blueboy, traveling waiters who establish themselves as numbers runners in a fictionalized Richmond of the 1930s. Published to great acclaim in 1969, The Book of Numbers centers on powerful themes of truth and illusion, myth and legend, and vividly conveys a sense of African American life on the periphery of white society. The new Virginia edition complements Pharr's text with an Afterword by Washington Post editor Jabari Asim.

Robert Deane Pharr was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916. The son of a minister and a schoolteacher, Pharr graduated from Virginia Union University and went on to graduate studies at Fisk, Columbia, and New York University, but spent most of his adult life as an itinerant waiter who moved from track to track, following the racing season. He wrote The Book of Numbers while working in New York City. During a stint at the Columbia University Faculty Club, Pharr showed the manuscript to a professor in the English Department who helped bring it to the attention of Doubleday. Pharr went on to write several other novels, among them The Soul Murder Case and Giveadamn Brown. He died in upstate New York in 1989.