From Powells.com
Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.
Synopses & Reviews
New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley introduces an "astonishing character"
(Los Angeles Times Book Review) in this acclaimed collection of entwined tales. Meet Socrates Fortlow, a tough ex-con seeking truth and redemption in South Central Los Angeles -- and finding the miracle of survival.
"I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there." Socrates Fortlow has done his time: twenty-seven years for murder and rape, acts forged by his huge, rock-breaking hands. Now, he has come home to a new kind of prison: two battered rooms in an abandoned building in Watts. Working for the Bounty supermarket, and moving perilously close to invisibility, it is Socrates who throws a lifeline to a drowning man: young Darryl, whose shaky path is already bloodstained and fearsome. In a place of violence and hopelessness, Socrates offers up his own battle-scarred wisdom that can turn the world around.
Review
"Mournful, insightful, and mystical....Mosley's best work of fiction." Elle
Review
"Political yet temperate, angry yet subtle, Always Outnumbered is the work of a writer unafraid of pushing forward his own notions of responsibility and entitlement....Always Outnumbered is ultimately the picture of a black community struggling to take on the challenge of finding its own better life..." Thomas Curwen, Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review
Review
"These are often difficult stories to read; never sentimental, they are finally, one and all, about pain and how we live with it. Perhaps that's why those brief moments when Socrates eases someone else's pain deliver such a powerful sense of catharsis. Hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction." Bill Ott, Booklist
Review
"A wonderful book...[with] characters who seem as real as the reader." Denver Post
Review
"Mosley has constructed a perfect Socrates for millennium's end a principled man who finds that the highest meaning of life can be attained through self-knowledge, and who convinces others of the power and value of looking within." San Francisco Chronicle
Review
"The elemental recurrence of fear and lust and rage are right out of Easy Rawlins, even if Socrates' story exhibits rather than extends Mosley's range." Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
Walter Mosley is the New York Times bestselling author of five Easy Rawlins mysteries: Devil in A Blue Dress, A Red Death, White Butterfly, Black Betty, and A Little Yellow Dog; three non-mystery novels, Blue Light, Gone Fishin', and R. L.'s Dream; two collections of stories featuring Socrates Fortlow, Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, for which he received the Anisfield Wolf Award, and which was an HBO movie; and a nonfiction book, Workin' On The Chain Gang. Mosley is also the author of the Leonid McGill, and Fearless Jones mystery series, The Tempest Tales and Six Easy Pieces. He is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America, a founder of the PEN American Center Open Book Committee, and is on the board of directors of the National Book Awards. A native of Los Angeles, he now lives in New York City.