Man Gone Down A Novel [Paperback]

On the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, the unnamed black narrator ofMan Gone Downfinds himself broke, estranged from his white wife and three children, and living in the bedroom of a friend’s six-year-old child. He has four days to come up with the money to keep the kids in school and make a down payment on an apartment for them in which to live. As we slip between his childhood in inner city Boston and present-day New York City, we learn of a life marked by abuse, abandonment, raging alcoholism, and the best and worst intentions of a supposedly integrated America. This is a story of the American Dream gone awry, about what it’s like to feel preprogrammed to fail in life and the urge to escape that sentence.

Michael Thomaswas born and raised in Boston. He’s been a cab driver, carpenter, restaurateur and filmmaker. He received his BA from Hunter College and his MFA from Warren Wilson College. He teaches at Hunter and lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.Man Gone Downis his first novel.

Winner of the International Dublin/IMPAC Literary Award

“Powerful and moving…An impressive success… [Thomas] knows how the odds are stacked in America. He knows the unlikelihood of successful black fatherhood. He knows that things are set up to keep the Other poor and the poor in their place. More than anything else, he knows how little but also—fortunately—how much it can take to bring a man down.” –Kaiama L. Glover,The New York Times Book Reviewin a front page review

“[A] jazzy, sinewy debut…Thomas’s urgent, quicksilver prose makes even the darkest moments of this novel shine.” –Cathleen Medwich,O: The Oprah Magazine

“A ravishing blues for the soul’s unending loneliness.” –Donna Seaman,Booklist(starred review)

“The narrator’s hard-bitten realism and Thomalƒ.