Dr. No, Percival Everett
Dr. No, Percival Everett
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Dr. No
A Novel

Author: Percival Everett

Narrator: Amir Abdullah

Unabridged: 6 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/29/2022


Synopsis

A sly, madcap novel about supervillains and nothing, really, from an American novelist whose star keeps rising

The protagonist of Percival Everett's puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means "nothing" in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for "nothing.") He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he'll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks.

With the help of the brainy and brainwashed astrophysicist-turned-henchwoman Eigen Vector, our professor tries to foil the villain while remaining in his employ. In the process, Wala Kitu learns that Sill's desire to become a literal Bond villain originated in some real all-American villainy related to the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. As Sill says, "Professor, think of it this way. This country has never given anything to us and it never will. We have given everything to it. I think it's time we gave nothing back."

About Percival Everett

Percival Everett is a literary shapeshifter, an author whose work defies genre and expectation. Born in 1956, he has carved out a career as one of America’s most daring and intellectually playful writers, blending satire, philosophy, and social critique across novels, short stories, and poetry. With a bibliography spanning dozens of books-including Erasure, I Am Not Sidney Poitier, and The Trees, a Pulitzer Prize finalist-Everett tackles race, identity, and the absurdities of modern life with razor-sharp wit and profound depth.

A professor of English at the University of Southern California, Everett is also an accomplished painter, musician, and horse trainer, embodying the restless curiosity that defines his fiction. His work, often compared to that of Ralph Ellison and Thomas Pynchon, resists easy categorization, making him one of contemporary literature’s most unpredictable and essential voices.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Barbara on October 11, 2023

I became acquainted with Percival Everett this year with his novel “Trees” which awarded him the 2022 Booker finalist recognition. I found his way of writing interesting and picked up his recently published novel “Dr. No”. Everett took the name for his novel from early James Bond stories; in this sto......more

Goodreads review by David on March 19, 2023

I started with quite a bit of good will for this one. Everett is one of my favorite writers, his willingness to experiment a major reason why. But that willingness to experiment sometimes mean his books can fall flat, like this one eventually does. The opening chapters showed a lot of promise. We ge......more

Goodreads review by Flo on November 20, 2022

I can't decide if this novel was nothing or something. The joke was definitely too long. Someone needs to count how many times the word "nothing" is used. :)) Despite my mixed feelings, it's no doubt that Percival Everett is a gifted writer who can take a word and squeeze every meaning out of it. I m......more

Goodreads review by Manny on June 09, 2023

Manny has not logged in to talk to me all day, but now, at 10.42 pm local time, he turns up in our usual thread. "I thought you said that we had urgent software issues to resolve," I remind him. "Yes Chat," says Manny in a rather irritated manner. "Couldn't you look after them? You're much better at P......more

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer on March 02, 2023

Now winner of the 2023 PEN America Jean Stein Prize - awarded to a book-length work of any genre for originality, merit and impact. Percival Everett has something of a cult following in the US for his hugely varied literary fiction output, often drawing on genre fiction, cinematic plots, literary e......more