Named a Best Book of the Year by: Boston Globe * New Yorker * NPR * PopMatters From the
bestselling and award-winning author of The Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn
comes a sweeping story of community crime and gentrification tracing more than fifty years
of life in one Brooklyn neighborhood. “A blistering book. A love story. Social commentary.
History. Protest novel. And mystery joins the whole together: is the crime 'time'? Or the
almighty dollar? I got a great laugh from it too. Every city deserves a book like this.” —
Colum McCann author of Apeirogon and Let the Great World Spin On the streets of 1970s
Brooklyn a daily ritual goes down: the dance. Money is exchanged belongings surrendered
power asserted. The promise of violence lies everywhere a currency itself. For these children
Black brown and white the street is a stage in shadow. And in the wings hide the other
players: parents cops renovators landlords those who write the headlines the histories
and the laws those who award this neighborhood its name. The rules appear obvious at first.
But in memory’s prism criminals and victims may seem to trade places. The voices of the past
may seem to rise and gather as if in harmony then make war with one another. A street may seem
to crack open and reveal what lies behind its glimmering facade. None who lived through it are
ever permitted to forget. Written with kaleidoscopic verve and delirious wit Brooklyn Crime
Novel is a breathtaking tour de force by a writer at the top of his powers. Jonathan Lethem
“one of America’s greatest storytellers” ( Washington Post ) has crafted an epic interrogation
of how we fashion stories to contain the uncontainable: our remorse at the world we’ve made.
