I'm Jonathan Kapart and welcome to Kapart. My guest today is a genius, a MacArthur

genius and a literary genius, a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.

Now he's the author of Crook Manifesto, the second installment of

his Harlem trilogy and the sequel to his terrific 2021 book Harlem Shuffle. He is

Coulson Whitehead. In this encore presentation of a conversation first recorded for

Washington Post live on July 20th, the revered writer talks about why the trilogy set in Harlem is a departure from what he'd

written before and how crook manifesto still reflects his style of grounding his

novels in critiques of how we live and how we treat each other. But the best part comes when I ask

Colson Whitehead if there is a period or theme that he hasn't written but would

love to dive into. The answer was romance novel.

What he's using for research was literally laugh out loud funny. Before we even get into the book I have to tell you that as a political science

nerd I don't read fiction I read history and I read

political books until I got to until someone said read underground railroad.

And then next thing I knew I've got stacks of your books on my bedside

table so just my saying that your reaction to you know pulling me over to the other side to to embracing fiction.

Well, you know, I write different kinds of stories.

You know, I have a zombie story I have historical fiction and now I'm writing

crime fiction but apart from their genre labels you know I'm pulling in critiques of capitalism, institutional structures, class, and so, you know, they start

off with a very simple premise and then spin out as I sort of work in my various

critiques about how we live and how we treat each other.

Actually, you know, that is, that's how you hooked me because you do, there's even though it's fiction, it's rooted in, in, you know, facts and truth and history. So thank you for that. Let's talk about

quick manifesto. It's it's set in the 1960s. I'm sorry Harlem

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