WINNER OF THE 2023 PEN/JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD
A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an
American novelist whose star keeps rising
The protagonist of Percival Everett's puckish new novel is a brilliant
professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains,
means "nothing" in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for "nothing.") He is an
expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of
study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the
perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break
into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing
nothing. Once he controls nothing he'll proceed with a dastardly plan to
turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks.
With the help of the brainy and brainwashed
astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to
foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala
Kitu learns that Sill's desire to become a literal Bond villain
originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of
Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, "Professor, think of it this way.
This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have
given everything to it. I think it's time we gave nothing back."
Dr. No is a caper with teeth, a wildly mischievous novel from one of
our most inventive, provocative, and productive writers. That it is
about nothing isn't to say that it's not about anything. In fact, it's
about villains. Bond villains. And that's not nothing.
