Such Sweet Thunder - A Novel

Set in Kansas City during the Jazz Age of the 1920s and '30s, this novel is a majestic evocation of childhood and parental love told through the eyes of a remarkable boy. This edition underwent substantial editing to give the original, unedited story more immediacy and new connections with the reader.

About the author

Vincent O. Carter was born in Kansas City in 1924. At 17 he was drafted into the Army, and took part in the Normandy invasion. After the war, he attended Lincoln University (PA) and Wayne State in Detroit, then returned to Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam before settling in Bern, where he died in 1983. He is also the author of The Bern Book.

Jesse McCarthy is an essayist, cultural critic, and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Sciences at Harvard. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Dissent, The New Republic and n+1. He was the recipient of the 2022 Whiting Award for his collection Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?. His recent book, The Blue Period, establishes Such Sweet Thunder as a work to be read and taught alongside James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison.

Product details

• Authors: Vincent O Carter, Vincent O. Carter, Carter Vincent O.
• Assisted by: Jesse McCarthy (Introduction)
• Publisher: Pushkin Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 23.10.2025
• EAN: 9781805332664
• ISBN: 978-1-80533-266-4
• No. of pages: 656
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Fiction > Narrative literature > Contemporary literature (from 1945); FICTION / Coming of Age, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Fiction: special features, Historical fiction, FICTION / Literary, Narrative theme: Coming of age, FICTION / African American & Black / Historical, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, Relating to African American / Black American people