Tayari Jones: An American Marriage

‘I know you’re innocent, there is not one doubt in my mind, but I also know that you’re not here.’

How much disruption can love endure?

With her latest novel, An American Marriage, Tayari Jones immerses readers in the inner worlds of Celestial and Roy – an ambitious newlywed African American couple on the brink of a promising future together. Suddenly, one year into their marriage, Roy is convicted of a crime they both know he didn’t commit.

Roy’s incarceration sets the scene for a complex, heartbreaking love story that navigates fidelity, obligation and the weight of the past. Told in part through an incisively crafted series of prison letters, the book brings broad social ideas – the American Dream, the New South, the racism of the judicial system and the prison industrial complex – into an intimate negotiation of desires and disappointments.

Alongside her latest Oprah-approved novel, Jones has written three previous works of fiction – Leaving Atlanta, The Untelling, and Silver Sparrow – all set in her hometown of Atlanta. She visits the Wheeler Centre this May to discuss her writing – and how we grapple with the intrusions of chance, timing and history into our lives.

Paperback Books will be our bookseller at this event.