White Tears

Praise

“White Tears is distinguished by a knowledge of blues at its deepest, a gift for observation at its most penetrating and stretches of plain old marvelous writing, some swallowing up the pages around them the way a single song . . . swallows up the side of an album. . . . Kunzru brings a canny and original insight to his American subject. . . . [His] awareness and discernment have particular value in an America of the moment where nothing less than the country’s meaning is at stake.”—Steve Erickson, The New York Times Book Review
 
“White Tears is a book that everyone should be reading right now. . . . The reverberations of [this book] echo long after it’s done. Part ghost story, part travelogue, White Tears is a drugged-out, spoiled-rotten treatise on race, class and poverty of the soul.”—Claire Howorth, TIME
 
“[White Tears is] a novel that’s as brave as it is brutal, and it lets nothing and nobody off the hook. . . . Stunning [and] audacious . . . an urgent novel that’s as challenging as it is terrifying. . . . completely impossible to put down . . . [Kunzru’s] writing is propulsive, clear and bright, whether he’s describing an old blues song or a shocking act of violence. . . . [White Tears] will shock you, horrify you, unsettle you, and that’s exactly the point.”—Michael Schaub, NPR
 
“[A] truly impressive novel. . . . White Tears is Kunzru’s best book yet.”—Anthony Domestico, The Boston Globe
 
“Captivating. . . . Kunzru’s graceful writing is exquisitely attuned to his material. . . . [White Tears is] neither a clever Time and Again story of time travel nor a tricky Westworld sort of past-present parallel. White Tears is a profoundly darker and more complex story of a haunting that elucidates the iniquitous history of white appropriation of black culture.”—Katharine Weber, The Washington Post

“An incisive meditation on race, privilege and music. Spanning decades, this novel brings alive the history of old-time blues and America’s racial conscience.”—Rabeea Saleem, Chicago Review of Books 
 
“Simply extraordinary. . . . Kunzru is a master storyteller and this is both a thrillingly written ghost story and an exploration of race conflict in America which is surely one of the best books you will read this year. Don’t miss it.”—Alice O’Keeffe, The Bookseller (Book of the Month pick)