The Devil Is a Southpaw - by Brandon Hobson (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Milton Muleborn has envied Matthew Echota, a talented Cherokee artist, ever since they were locked up together in a dangerous juvenile detention center in the late 1980s. Until Matthew escaped, that is. A novel within a novel, we read here Milton's dark, sometimes comic, and possibly unreliable account of the story of their childhood even as, years later, he remains jealous of Matthew's extraordinary abilities and unlikely success. Milton reveals secrets about their friendship, their families, and their nightmarish, surreal, experience of imprisonment. In revisiting the past, he explores the echoing traumas of incarceration and pride."--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award

A haunting, unforgettable novel of obsession, pride, and forgiveness, exploring the friendship and rivalry between two gifted boys in harrowing circumstances, from the acclaimed writer of The Removed

Milton Muleborn has envied Matthew Echota, a talented Cherokee artist, ever since they were locked up together in a dangerous juvenile detention center in the late 1980s. Until Matthew escaped, that is.

A novel within a novel, we read here Milton's dark, sometimes comic, and possibly unreliable account of the story of their childhood even as, years later, he remains jealous of Matthew's extraordinary abilities and unlikely success. Milton reveals secrets about their friendship, their families, and their nightmarish, surreal, experience of imprisonment. In revisiting the past, he explores the echoing traumas of incarceration and pride.

Filled with Brandon Hobson's swirling yet visceral writing, and punctuated with original artwork, The Devil Is a Southpaw is an ambitious, elegant, and propulsive novel in the spirit of Vladimir Nabokov and Gabriel García Márquez.

Review Quotes

"A feast of whimsy." - Boston Globe

"A memorable, character-driven portrait of trauma and pride."--People

"Stylistically, the book belongs with writers who bend reality into myth, such as Shirley Jackson's haunted suburbs, Don DeLillo's meditations on violence, or even Roberto Bolaño's obsessive narrators. Yet Hobson's voice is distinct in its insistence that stories themselves, whether unreliable, fragmented, or overly fictional, are what allow his characters to survive. The novel leaves us questioning whether truth matters less than the art that shapes it. In the end, The Devil is a Southpaw resists the neatness of resolution." - Chicago Review of Books

"Hobson holds the reader's attention with appealing surrealistic asides, such as the boys' encounter with a doppelgänger of painter Salvador Dalí, who rhapsodizes over the band Duran Duran. There's plenty of fun to be had with this cerebral novel." - Publishers Weekly

"Truly a beast to be reckoned with: a book to be savored slowly with an ongoing awe at the prose of author Brandon Hobson...The Devil Is a Southpaw can best be described as having the energy of a creative genius, with lines that flow like trains of thought, sprawlingly lyrical. Nothing could better suit a novel with art so clearly at its helm." - BookPage

"A moving, propulsive box of surprises that explores state violence, mental illness, religion, and the long-lasting traumas of incarceration." - Booklist

"Brandon Hobson is a great contemporary American fiction writer--wily, funny, sly, sad, and vast. The Devil Is a Southpaw is a welcome addition to his very significant stack. It's got a little Cervantes in it, a little Pink Floyd, and a lot of American tragedy. I bet you'll love it, as I did." - Rick Moody, author of Hotels of North America

"Hobson has never been more brilliant, more transcendent, more in touch with the beating human spirit, than he is in The Devil is a Southpaw. No other writer is so continuously reinventing the novel, weaving together Cherokee myth, rock and roll, the supernatural, and his own first published paintings. Perhaps his best novel yet, which is really saying something." - Deb Olin Unferth, author of Barn 8