The Unicorn Woman. The Pulitzer Prize Finalist for 2025

'A literary giant' TAYARI JONESA richly imaginative and moving new novel from the Pulitzer finalist and acclaimed author of CorregidoraA cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he's a man on a quest: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love. Returning from the Second World War not to a hero's welcome, but to the discrimination of the Jim Crow laws, Buddy stumbles across the Unicorn Woman, a carnival sideshow with a horn growing from her forehead, whose strange beauty he can't forget.
As he drifts across the South, from Kentucky to Memphis, Buddy encounters a dazzling array of almost mythic characters: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists and bigots - dreaming all the while of the unforgettable Unicorn Woman herself. With her inimitable eye for beauty, tragedy and humour, Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of the Black imagination in a time of frustration and hope.'Her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humour, and incisiveness, is unmatched' IMANI PERRY'Gayl Jones is enjoying a dazzling late-career renaissance' SUZI FEAY, TLS'Intricate, mesmerising and endlessly inventive' DEESHA PHILYAW