The Unicorn Woman
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'A literary giant' TAYARI JONES
A richly imaginative and moving new novel from the Pulitzer finalist and acclaimed author of Corregidora
A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he's a man on a quest: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love.
Returning from the Second World War not to a hero's welcome, but to the discrimination of the Jim Crow laws, Buddy stumbles across the Unicorn Woman, a carnival sideshow with a horn growing from her forehead, whose strange beauty he can't forget.
As he drifts across the South, from Kentucky to Memphis, Buddy encounters a dazzling array of almost mythic characters: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists and bigots - dreaming all the while of the unforgettable Unicorn Woman herself.
With her inimitable eye for beauty, tragedy and humour, Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of the Black imagination in a time of frustration and hope.
'Her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humour, and incisiveness, is unmatched' IMANI PERRY
'Gayl Jones is enjoying a dazzling late-career renaissance' SUZI FEAY, TLS
'Intricate, mesmerising and endlessly inventive' DEESHA PHILYAW
A richly imaginative and moving new novel from the Pulitzer finalist and acclaimed author of Corregidora
A cook and tractor repairman, Buddy was known as Budweiser to his army pals because he's a wise guy. But underneath that surface, he's a man on a quest: looking for religion, looking for meaning, looking for love.
Returning from the Second World War not to a hero's welcome, but to the discrimination of the Jim Crow laws, Buddy stumbles across the Unicorn Woman, a carnival sideshow with a horn growing from her forehead, whose strange beauty he can't forget.
As he drifts across the South, from Kentucky to Memphis, Buddy encounters a dazzling array of almost mythic characters: circus barkers, topiary trimmers, landladies who provide shelter and plenty of advice for their all-Black clientele, proto feminists and bigots - dreaming all the while of the unforgettable Unicorn Woman herself.
With her inimitable eye for beauty, tragedy and humour, Jones offers a rich, intriguing exploration of the Black imagination in a time of frustration and hope.
'Her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humour, and incisiveness, is unmatched' IMANI PERRY
'Gayl Jones is enjoying a dazzling late-career renaissance' SUZI FEAY, TLS
'Intricate, mesmerising and endlessly inventive' DEESHA PHILYAW
- Published: Aug 14 2025
- ISBN: 9780349016931
Press Reviews
Imani Perry
Gayl Jones's work represents a watershed in American literature. From a literary standpoint, her form is impeccable; from a historical standpoint, she stands at the very cutting edge of understanding the modern world, and as a Black woman writer, her truth-telling, filled with beauty, tragedy, humour, and incisiveness, is unmatched. Jones is a writer's writer, and her influence is found everywhere
- TLS
Through Buddy's picaresque journey, Gayl Jones shows her mastery of both dialogue and interiority. There is a bare minimum of scene-setting and little indication of actions such as standing, sitting or leaving a room. Instead we find encounter after encounter with richly individuated characters, each sporting his or her own verbal idiosyncrasies, as noted by a well-read travelling man with an acute ear for speech patterns, just like his creator.