The stunning, thought-provoking first novel by a “lost giant of American literature” (The New Yorker)

June, 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

One of the great jazz novels of any era, A Drop of Patience tells the story of a blind horn player’s journey through the themes of race, blindness, and music.

At the age of five, Ludlow Washington is given up by his parents to a brutal white-run state institution for blind African American children, where everyone is taught music—the only trade by which they are expected to make a living. Ludlow is a prodigy on the horn and at fifteen is “purchased” out of the Home by a bandleader in the fictive Southern town of New Marsails.

By eighteen, he is married with a baby daughter, but as his reputation spreads, he seeks to grow musically, leaving his budding family for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New York City. Navigating the worlds of music and race and women, Ludlow’s career follows an arc towards collapse, a nervous breakdown, recovery, a long-delayed public recognition, only for him to finally abandon the spotlight and return to his roots and find solace in the black church.     

A Drop of Patience is a brilliant portrayal of a jazz musician. It stands apart as an exemplary parable of African American history, of racial politics, and of musical creative genius.

The first and only short story collection by William Melvin Kelley, author of A Different Drummer, and the source from which he drew inspiration for his subsequent novels.

Originally published in 1964, this collection of sixteen stories includes three linked sets of stories about the Carey, Bedlow, and Dunford families. They represent the earliest work of William Melvin Kelley and provided a rich source of stories and characters who were to fill out his later novels.

Spanning generations from the Deep South during Reconstruction to New York City in the 1960s, these insightful stories depict African American families—their struggles, their heartbreak, and their love.

A searing, provocative satire by one of the most important African-American novelists of the twentieth century that lays bare the abiding racism and the legacy of slavery on the psyche of white America.

Mitchell Pierce is a well-off New York ad executive whose marriage is falling apart. He no longer feels any passion for his pregnant wife, Tam, and even feels estranged from his toddler son, Jake. Mitchell is trapped in an unrewarding and loveless life, and though domestic violence isn’t in his character, it is never very far away, either.

Mitchell’s life will irrevocably change one day, though, when a young man appears at his apartment door to pick up the family’s black maid, Opal, for a date. Cooley it turns out is not a stranger to the household. The twins that Tam is carrying are a result of superfecundation—the fertilization of two separate ova by two different males. So when one child is born black and the other white, Mitchell goes on a quest to find Cooley and make him take his baby.

In the tradition of Brer Rabbit trickster tales, dem enacts a modern-day fable of turning the tables on the white oppressor and inverting the history of miscegenation and subjugation of African Americans.

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD • William Melvin Kelley’s final work, a Joycean, Rabelaisian romp in which he brings back some of his most memorable characters in a novel of three intertwining stories.

“[A] lost giant of American Literature.” —The New Yorker

Ride on out with Rab and Turt, two o’New Afriqueque’s toughfast, ruefast Texnosass Arangers, as they battle Chief Pugmichillo and ricecure Mr. Charcarl Walker-Rider. Cut in on Carlyle Bedlowe, wrecker of marriage, saver of souls.

Or just along with Chig Dunford, product of Harlem and private schools, on the circular voyage of self-discovery that takes him from Europe’s Café of One Hand to Harlem’s Jack O’Gee’s Golden Grouse Bar & Restaurant.

Beginning on an August Sunday in one of Europe’s strangest cities, Dunfords Travels Everywheres but always returns back to the same point—the “Begending”—where Mr. Charcarl’s dream becomes Chig Dunford’s reality (the “Ivy League Negro” in the world outside the Ivory Tower).

“Among the most innovative and exciting novelists in the history of international literature, the opportunity to honor William Melvin Kelley with the American Book Award is a great privilege. Before Columbus Foundation is elated to welcome his work back into print, thanks to Anchor Books. It is a unique thrill to see Dunfords Travels Everywheres now illustrated in it’s new edition by Aiki Kelley, whom we also honor with this year’s Award. The majesty of William Melvin Kelley’s vital contribution to international letters remains urgent and evermore medicinal in its cosmic scope and unifying embrace. The total arc and panorama of human experience, embodied in the mythologies we share from antiquity to the present are fully illuminated in William Melvin Kelley’s artistry. An absolute virtuoso of the language, with Dunfords Travels Everywheres, William Melvin Kelley ignites the spiritual imagination, reviving and resuscitating images of our journey with wit and grace. His masterwork is truly a wonder to behold. Vivid, charismatic, mercurial, musical, Dunfords Travels Everywheres stands as one of the great contributions to the art of the novel. Laughing to keep from crying, living life not dying, this new illustrated edition sings a joyous, uplifitng song.” —Justin Desmangles, citation from the American Book Award