Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

She felt their eyes, all those executioners...

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly popular, highly controversial profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators, and prisoners are com­peting for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death matches before packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thur­war and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, Thurwar considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games. But CAPE's corporate own­ers will stop at nothing to protect their status quo, and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors, to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alli­ance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means from a "new and necessary American voice" (Tommy Orange, The New York Times Book Review).

*Finalist for the National Book Award for Fiction*
*One of the New York Times' Top Ten Books of the Year*
*Winner of the ALA Alex Award*
*Winner of the Inside Literary Prize*
*Finalist for the NYPL Young Lions Fiction Award*
*Finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award
*Finalist for the Goodreads Choice Awards*
*Finalist for the Aspen Words Literary Prize*
*Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize*
*Finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel*
*Finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Science Fiction Book of the Year*
*Shortlisted for the Inside Literary Prize*
*Longlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award*
*Longlisted for the New American Voices Awards*
*Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize*
*Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction*
*Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Prize*