Novel race

The Long Division is a timely novel.

The novel, by Derek Nikitas, explores the messy complexity of race relations in America.

Then again, if one uses the word "race" in the same breath as America, "timely" can't be an apt descriptor of the novel.

Americans are known to have little or no historical consciousness, meaning that everything that happens is more often than not taken to be happening for the first time.

Yet much of what's happening today is happening along a historical continuum.

The messy complexity of race relations has had a messy, bloody, violent and long history. Seen from this angle the novel (with its telling title) isn't simply timely, but timeless.

A review of the novel is here.