![]() ![]() And then we get to the prologue, and find ourselves reading what appears to be a brash serial-killer-in-space novel. An overtly intellectual and political text certainly perhaps a gently liberal political extrapolation in the vein of Kim Stanley Robinson, perhaps something a little less pipe-and-slippers. So before we have read a page of the novel we have certain expectations. The novel also bears epigrams from voguish moral philosopher John Gray and militant atheist Richard Dawkins. In this he namechecks biologists like Matt Ridley and Stephen Pinker alongside social psychologists and American and Islamic cultural commentators. This is not the only time Morgan tries to tell us something directly, outside of the story: there is a substantial acknowledgements section that precedes the text. Both titles relate to the central character, but only the original gets straight to Morgan's concerns, lets us know up front that this is a novel about identity politics. ![]() ![]() It is an act of cowardice on the part of the publishers that is so minor as to be baffling. In America-the country that occupies the heart of the novel-Richard Morgan's Black Man has become Richard K. This is a book that wears its heart on its sleeve. ![]()
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