Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved
private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this
explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New York Times
bestselling author of Friday
Black
“Like Orwell’s 1984 and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale,
Adjei-Brenyah’s book presents a dystopian vision so…illuminating
that it should permanently shift our understanding of who we are and
what we’re capable of doing.” —The Washington Post
“This book will change you!…A masterpiece.” —Jenna Bush
Hager, The Today Show’s #ReadWithJenna
She felt their eyes, all those executioners…
Loretta Thurwar and Hamara “Hurricane Staxxx” Stacker are the
stars of 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 for 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, she 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).