Lindsay Johns

Colson Whitehead celebrates old Harlem in a hardboiled thriller that’s also a morality tale

Harlem Shuffle vividly evokes the hoodlums, drug addicts and prostitutes who haunted the district’s rundown tenements in the early 1960s

Colson Whitehead. [Getty Images]
  • Comments

  • Harlem Shuffle

    Colson Whitehead

    Fleet, pp. 336, £16

Already a subscriber? Log in

This article is for subscribers only

Get a free bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label when you subscribe to The Spectator for just £12 in our Black Friday sale

  • Free bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label whisky, worth £30
  • Unlimited access to our website and app
  • Enjoy Spectator newsletters and podcasts
  • Explore our online archive, going back to 1828

Read next

Trending

Rod Liddle

I liked John Prescott enormously

There was a time we all looked forward to on the BBC Today programme, back in the early years of Tony Blair’s first term as Prime Minister. Late July, early August. Blair had scooted off to San Gimignano, Mandelson was probably on a yacht with an oligarch, even Campbell was away battling his weird inner demons somewhere.

More on manhattan

Also by Lindsay Johns

Latest

Comments

Black Friday sale: Get 10 weeks for just $1

Unlimited access to the The Spectator, online and via the app

Already a subscriber? Log in