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Chain-Gang All-Stars

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Chain-Gang All-Stars

By: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Narrated by: Shayna Small, Michael Crouch, Lee Osorio, Aaron Goodson
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About this listen

Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars - the popular and highly controversial programme inside America's prison system. In packed arenas, watched by millions of live-stream viewers, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara 'Hurricane Staxxx' Stacker are teammates and lovers. Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme's corporate owners stack the odds against her - will the price be simply too high?

©2023 Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (P)2023 Penguin Audio Dystopian Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Political Satire Science Fiction

Critic Reviews

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is one of the most exciting young writers in America. His work is urgent, engaging, wildly entertaining, formally bold and politically electrifying. Read one page, any page, and you'll see what I mean. (George Saunders, author of LINCOLN IN THE BARDO)
A defiant, awe-inspiring novel that will be read, studied and celebrated for generations, Chain-Gang All-Stars leads with love. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah writes with stunning compassion and moral clarity as he interrogates every facet of our carceral world and the American spectacle of violence, never losing sight of the human cost of systemic injustice. Readers will be forever changed by this book. (Jessamine Chan, author of THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD MOTHERS)
Makes explicit how the spirit erodes as the body becomes currency. Adjei-Brenyah writes sharply about the economy of spectacle and the fickle alchemy between futility and hope. (Raven Leilani, author of LUSTER)
All stars
Most relevant  
This book felt like it had a very slow start, like, 3/4 of the book slow start, but then the build up to that final blow, that final death… it was exhilarating! Phew!

Well shit

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really enjoyed this one.
think hunger games x blm
dystopia, like our world but little bit diff'rent

voices were great!

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An entertaining story well told by a first-class cast. Highly recommend reading now before it no doubt becomes a film in coming years.

Brilliant book, from start to end

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This is without a doubt the best book I’ve read this year!
The descriptions of a not too distant American prison system felt so real, so alive.
Read it! Read it!
The performances are so good, best audiobook I’ve listened to
The stories are filled with nuance and compassion,
Loved every minute of it

Everyone should read this!

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Really really great book. To balance the satire whilst having a really interesting and engaging story takes skill and Nana nails it here. The little segments of real life facts sprinkled through the book are done very well, where a lesser writer would struggle with integrating facts like this, Nana does it seamlessly. Very thought provoking book with real life connotations (scarily so). Manages to humanise the people that we as a society in the current world and system actively de-humanise, but without shying away from the actions that landed them in prison in the first place.
Very well done and a must read for anyone that can stomach some violence.

The story with the factual asides

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This was such a beautiful and addictive book. The characters were wonderfully developed and the narrators performed them with such elegance, it may be my favourite audio book performance yet. Even more, chain gang spoke to the spectrum of human experience, holding dialectic perspectives with compassion and nuance.

Expected a kind of hunger games - got so much more

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An engaging account of a very possible future, driven by a superb narrative from multiple characters perspectives

Footnotes about current correctional and civic mistreatment make the authors potential future seem even more possible

Superb story, disturbingly possible

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Great concept, felt like I was just getting into it and it was over!! Loved it.

The concept was great

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