The Broken King: A Memoir

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMESS 100 NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

From the author of Man Gone Downa New York Times Top Ten Book of the Year and winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Awardcomes a deeply personal memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in a portrait of three generations of Black American men

In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel Man Gone Down, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. Called powerful and moving . . . an impressive success, by Kaiama L. Glover on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, Thomas debut introduced a writer of prodigious and rare talent. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, The Broken King, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, success and failure in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir.

The title is borrowed from T.S. Eliots line in Little Gidding: If you came at night like a broken king, and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwins The Fire Next Time or Nabokovs Speak, Memory, Thomas memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his fathera philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of The Broken King is the story of Thomas own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prize-winning novel with the house of Beckett.

Every page of The Broken King rings with the impact of Americas sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative minds journey into and out of madness.
Theres a bridge of beautiful American proselyrical, powerful, fearlessly candidrunning straight from James Baldwin to Thomas, who is obviously Baldwins worthy heir . . . An utterly immersive book.Francisco Goldman, author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Monkey Boy