New Boy

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What to expect

Random House presents the unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of New Boy by Tracy Chevalier, read by Prentice Onayemi.

'O felt her presence behind him like a fire at his back.'

Arriving at his fourth school in six years, diplomat’s son Osei Kokote knows he needs an ally if he is to survive his first day – so he’s lucky to hit it off with Dee, the most popular girl in school. But one student can’t stand to witness this budding relationship: Ian decides to destroy the friendship between the black boy and the golden girl. By the end of the day, the school and its key players – teachers and pupils alike – will never be the same again.

The tragedy of Othello is transposed to a 1970s’ suburban Washington schoolyard, where kids fall in and out of love with each other before lunchtime, and practise a casual racism picked up from their parents and teachers. Watching over the shoulders of four 11-year-olds – Osei, Dee, Ian and his reluctant girlfriend Mimi – Tracy Chevalier's powerful drama of friends torn apart by jealousy, bullying and betrayal will leave you reeling.

Critics Review

  • High school, with its crushes, insecurities and politics, works as the perfect backdrop to Shakespeare’s original plot… New Boy, with its angsty teenagers, racial frictions and a magnificently fleshed out antagonist, is a tense and tight read… It can be read in a single afternoon and it really is a heady rollercoaster of emotions, right to the breathless and shocking last line

    Irish Independent

  • This is a compact and intense read full of twists, turns and intrigue. The fast-moving shifting allegiances and rivalries that dominate the playground provide a backdrop full of heightened emotion that cleverly reflects the atmosphere of the original play

    Daily Express

  • Chevalier is at her best when describing the tenderness of young love or conveying the inner thoughts of her protagonists … Chevalier deftly and succinctly gives [her characters] all more of a backstory than Shakespeare ever allowed … transposing this story to the playground makes absolute sense. It is of interest as an exercise in illustrating the universality of the original, and works equally well as a standalone piece which tells of a tightly wound, intimately imagined situation hurtling towards inevitable tragedy

    Scotland on Sunday

  • What Chevalier has done is recast the play to illuminate the peculiar trials of our era… a fascinating exercise … In Chevalier’s handling, the insidious manipulations of Othello translate smoothly to the dynamics of a sixth-grade playground, with all its skinned-knee passions and hop-scotch rules … How Chevalier renders Iago’s scheme into the terms of a modern-day playground provides some wicked delight. She’s immensely inventive about it all

    Washington Post

  • Chevalier’s modern interpretation of Othello deftly explores race relations in the schoolyard in 1970s suburban Washington, and captures how it feels to be an outsider

    i, 2017 Books of the Year

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