The US author on dystopian fiction, the experience of speaking to prisoners about his debut novel and why both of America’s major parties ‘love the war machine’
, praised by Bernardine Evaristo as “so daring and mind-bending… that you haven’t a clue where he’s going to take you”. His first novel,, now out in paperback and currently on the shortlist for this year’s Arthur C Clarke science fiction award , takes place in a future in which live-streamed combat between death-row convicts has become prime-time entertainment. Adjei-Brenyah, born and raised in New York, was speaking from his home in the Bronx.
I’m anti- the gun-fu era of action movies where 80,000 people get murdered by the protagonist and it’s just fineThe speculative nature of the story helped me feel more comfortable getting extremely specific about the brutal statistical realities of prison. I don’t deny I’m writing a dystopia, but dystopia is really just a point of view that depends on your proximity to violence.
Both of the popular parties are as interested as each other in the carceral, militaristic attitude that America has. Not to say they’re equal: there’s one that’s more evil than the other – the Republican one, for British readers! – the one with the man who’s been charged with several counts of sexual assault. But the Democratic party loves the war machine just the same. It loves the carceral system just the same.
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