A Different Drummer Audiobook By William Melvin Kelley cover art

A Different Drummer

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

A Different Drummer

By: William Melvin Kelley
Narrated by: Jay Smooth
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $15.75

Buy for $15.75

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

The stunning, thought-provoking first novel by a "lost giant of American literature" (The New Yorker)

June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.

©2019 William Melvin Kelley (P)2019 Random House Audio
African American Classics Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Satire Comedy Witty
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Critic reviews

"[A] lost giant of American literature.... Brilliant." (The New Yorker)

"A work of deep originality and superior craftsmanship whose treatment of racial politics resists ideological classification.... A potent brew of mythology, gossip, history, political argument and family drama.... A Different Drummer is animated by a force so immense, and fed by so much history, that it transcends encapsulation." (The Wall Street Journal)

"Kelley blended fantasy and fact to construct an alternative world whose sweep and complexity drew comparisons to James Joyce and William Faulkner." (The New York Times)