I'm Jonathan K. Parton, welcome to K-Party.

My guest today is a genius, a MacArthur genius, and a literary genius, a two-time winner

of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

And 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 Colson Whitehead.

In this 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 and 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 about that 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 by saying that your reaction to pulling me over to the other side, to embracing fiction.

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

I have a zombie story, I have historical fiction, and now I'm writing crime fiction.

...