Philadelphia Fire

John Edgar Wideman

From Shelf: Black Stories and Black History

The lyrical masterpiece from John Edgar Wideman, one of the standout black American writers of the modern age and winner of the 2017 Prix Femina Etranger

In 1985 police bombed a West Philadelphia row house. Eleven people died and a fire started that destroyed sixty other houses. John Edgar Wideman brings these events and their repercussions to shocking life in this seminal novel.At the heart of Philadelphia Fire is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighbourhood and who becomes obsessed with the search for a lone survivor of the event, a young boy seen running from the flames.One of Wideman's most ambitious and celebrated works, Philadelphia Fire is about race, life and survival in urban America.

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