Colson Whitehead

Here’s a guy whose novels always start with really good ideas. In fact, Whitehead’s jacket copy often is more interesting than other authors’ entire novels. That’s an impressive gift, indeed. Nor does he disappoint over the long haul, spinning those ideas–hooks, really–into clever, entertaining, and deceptively weighty stories. For instance, his first novel, The Intuitionist, which focuses on a group of elevator inspectors, addresses questions of racial equality and upward mobility. Whitehead’s latest zeitgeist comedy of manners and errors involves a former whiz-bang “nomenclature consultant” who is summoned to help the citizens of a community choose a new name for their town. Given WhiteheadÕs track record, that should be good raw material for his imagination to work with.