Why we’re excited
Arthur Champion, a Black music student at Oberlin in 1918, is doing fine until a spiteful professor gets him drafted into the army. From the Somme he goes on to Harlem's jazz clubs and eventually into Woodrow Wilson's White House, and the novel follows him through all of it.
Percival Everett won the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for James, and his Erasure became the film American Fiction. He is a funny writer about very serious things, race and who owns art among them. Readers of either book, or anyone interested in jazz-age America, should take note.
On our most-anticipated list since 21 October 2026. See all the most anticipated books →
What to know about Serious Music
James is the one Percival Everett book we have reviewed, at 4.5 out of 5.
Readers have saved it often enough to put it at No. 22 on our list of March 2027’s most-anticipated releases.
From the publisher
A thrilling, darkly comic journey of a Black musician making his way from the trenches of the Somme, to the jazz clubs of Harlem, to the illicit inner sanctum of Woodrow Wilson’s White House, by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author of James.
In 1918, Arthur Champion is one of a handful of Black students attending the Oberlin Conservatory of Music when he runs afoul of a vindictive professor and finds himself unceremoniously enlisted in the United States Army. What ensues is one man’s sweeping voyage through the decade, a kaleidoscopic view of America during seismic social shifts from the author hailed by The Chicago Tribune as “our current Great American Novelist.”
A brilliant interrogation of racism and ownership in art, Serious Music is a breakneck, high-octane read, thrumming with the electrifying humor and rigorous moral clarity that is the hallmark of this masterful writer’s contribution to American letters.
Description supplied by the publisher.
We haven’t read Serious Music yet. When our review goes up, it will replace this page.
