Fish Tales

Acquired by Toni Morrison, championed by Gayl Jones, and almost forgotten for forty years, FISH TALES is a fierce, fearless modern classic for our own fragmented times.

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‘Candid, fast and alive’ RAVEN LEILANI

‘Fast, fearless, so full of life it practically vibrates in your hands’ JUSTIN TORRES

‘Wondrous and outrageous, real and incandescent and alive’ BRYAN WASHINGTON

‘Fish Tales will certainly dazzle you, and it might even scandalize you, but it never tells a lie’ ANGELA FLOURNOY’

A novel of desire, pleasure, drugs and sex . . . We’ll all be better for it having been rediscovered’ LITERARY HUB

Lewis Jones is a party girl on the edge. Bankrolled by her husband Woody and accompanied by her fellow hedonist Kitty Kat, a hustler who knows all the best spots, Lewis bounces between the demimonde of 70s New York and affluent Black Detroit in a fractured haze of lovers, cocaine parties and champagne baths. But her wild pursuit of freedom is upended when she meets the handsome, erudite, cruel Brook – the only man who won’t allow her to take control.

A kaleidoscopic swirl of sex and exploitation, selfhood and self-destruction, this lost classic is an unnervingly contemporary depiction of the collision between identity, freedom and female desire – perfect for fans of In the Cut, Oreo, Luster and I’m a Fan.

Author Biography

Nettie Jones is the author of Fish Tales, which was acquired by Toni Morrison and published by Random House in 1984. Her second novel, Mischief Makers, was published in 1989. Her essays and short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Jones was named a New York Times Promising New Novelist in 1985. She is the recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Individual Artist Award, a Yaddo Foundation Award, a Michigan Council of the Arts Award, a New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study Student’s Choice Award, a Carnegie Fund for Authors Award, and a PEN America Freedom to Write Award.