“An early contender for best title of the year.” LiteraryHub
A humorous and heart-wrenching story of a transgender woman’s re-entry into life on the outside after twenty years in incarceration told over one whirlwind Fourth of July weekend.
When Carlotta Mercedes was pulled into a robbery gone wrong, she still went by the name she’d grown up with. But not long after her conviction, she began to live as a woman, an embrace of selfhood that prison authorities rejected, keeping Carlotta trapped in an all-male cell block, abused by both inmates and guards.
Over twenty years later, Carlotta is granted conditional freedom and returns to a much-changed Brooklyn, where she struggles to reconcile with a family reluctant to accept her true identity, and to avoid any minor parole infraction that might get her consigned back to lockup.
Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta sweeps the reader through seemingly every street of Brooklyn, much as Joyce’s Ulysses does through Dublin. Hannaham introduces a cast of unforgettable characters even as it challenges us to confront the glaring injustices of a society and prison system that continues to punish people long after their time has been served.
“Hannaham's prose is gloriously dense and full of elegant observations.” ROXANNE GAY
Review
“Carlotta is irrepressible. Don’t let the title of this wondrous novel fool you. Hannaham cares deeply about Carlotta. From a mash-up of perspectives, he writes like a guardian angel. Or - as our narrator says of Carlotta, when she’s feeling elated - “like a drag queen doing a layup.” - JOHN IRVING, THE NEW YORK TIMES
“Lovingly linguistic and equal parts Zora Neale Hurston, Chester Himes, and the now mythical Stagg R. Leigh, this refreshingly cool look at the new New York through old eyes is the Blackest book I’ve read in years. Carlotta is more than one to remember, she’s a treasure.” - Paul Beatty, Booker Prize-winning author of The Sellout
"As if by means of some mashup of Hubert Selby, Darius James, and Bruce Wagner, Hannaham’s tripwire provocations and dazzling verbal fireworks give way to a fathomless tenderness and remorse. His Carlotta is spectacularly Brooklyn and devastatingly human all the way down to the bone." - Jonatham Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn
“Hannaham’s latest novel is at once irreverently funny and devastatingly sad, a quixotic tale about the queerness of missed time; how, for the most marginalized, the shackles of the past and uncertain promises of the future make dwelling in the present seem impossible.” - Michelle Hart, author of We Do What we Do in the Dark
“Maybe the comic novel is the best way to explore some of the least funny aspects of our society. Maybe the justice system is so immoral, the forces of capitalism so relentless, the treatment of some of our citizens so indefensible, that we have no choice but to turn heartbreak into hilarity, to laugh. Carlotta is a beautiful, unsettling book. The title is a trick; James Hannaham gives a shit, and so should everyone else.” - Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind
“Borne along by a riotous current of verbal ingenuity, James Hannaham’s new novel is-like its endlessly vibrant protagonist-a marvel of invention. There wasn’t a page that didn't surprise me. By its end, this book had conjured a depth of identification with its heroine that I was not prepared for. Utterly brilliant.” - Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize winner for Homeland Elegies
“James Hannaham’s Carlotta is an astonishing act of empathy and identification, which will shake readers out of their torpor and remind them that fiction at its highest is a form of metempsychosis. Carlotta steps off the page and into your room, and stands there, implacable, educating you on her terms.” - Lucy Sante, author of Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York
"An early contender for best title of the year." - Literary Hub
"James Hannaham’s dazzling Didn’t Nobody Give a S*** What Happened to Carlotta deserves its place on the radar. The main character is a trans woman and the sexual politics are sharp. Carlotta Mercedes, released from jail after 20 years, is a protagonist with an outspoken voice." - The Independent (October Book of the Month)
“A writer of major importance.” - New York Times Book Review
“As a creative dynamo, Hannaham is the real deal . . . Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta is his most tender and tenacious novel yet, with the ear, soul, mouth, and swagger of a real New Yorker.” - Interview Magazine
“Razor-sharp….James Hannaham’s Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta deftly blends the novelist’s two modes: wicked satire and fiction in conversation with the classics.” - Los Angeles Times
“Irreverently funny and devastatingly sad, a quixotic tale about the queerness of missed time.” - Electric Lit
“Carlotta is a vision to behold as she attempts reentry into a now-unfamiliar world. In Hannaham’s hands, this theme shimmers with humor, pathos, and that kind of queer energy that readers love.” - Edge Media
"Superb... Carlotta deserves a lot of things society rarely provides to women like her-among them, a role in great fiction. Hannaham gives Carlotta her due. A brash, ambitious novel carried by an unforgettable narrator." - Kirkus Reviews (starred)
“A completely unforgettable, original, and singular novel by a brave, exciting new writer.” - Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage (on Delicious Foods)
"Hannaham's prose is gloriously dense and full of elegant observations that might go unmade by a lesser writer. He creates full-bodied characters. Even the minor figures are drawn with subtle details." - Roxane Gay (on (on Hannaham's previous novel Delicious Foods)
"James Hannaham's new novel is a tour de force. Gripping, haunting, and deeply moving, it beguiles the reader with the urgent immediacy of its characters' lives, while also reverberating with universal themes of freedom and enslavement, love and survival." - Jennifer Egan (on Delicious Foods)
"Hannaham’s stimulating work moves like a plane in tailspin, tossing off flashes of wisdom as the ground below gets ever closer. It’s a ride worth taking." - Publisher's Weekly
"Hannaham is not only creative or stunningly gifted or intellectual or supremely original, but all those distinctions at once." - The Washington Post
"[Hannaham] is serious about investigating the long-term effects of internalized racism, and the despair that prevents people from helping themselves... A sharp critique of the American belief that you can do anything as long as you work hard." - Entertainment Weekly
About the Author
James Hannaham is the award-winning author of Delicious Foods, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. It was selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program, the New York Times’s and Washington Post’s 100 Notable Books of 2015, and was a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize. His debut God Says No, was honoured by the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Awards.
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