Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned
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"Mournful, insightful, and mystical...Mosley's best work of fiction." —Elle
New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley introduces us to Socrates Fortlow, an "astonishing character" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) in this acclaimed collection of linked stories.
"I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there."
Socrates Fortlow has done his time: twenty-seven years for murder and rape, acts forged by his own two rock-breaking hands. Now, he has come home to a new kind of prison: two battered rooms in an abandoned building in Watts. Working a dead-end job at the supermarket and moving perilously close to invisibility, Socrates seeks inner truth and redemption amid the violence and hopelessness of South Central Los Angeles. In fourteen intertwining tales, Socrates grapples with situations that are never easy as he attempts to hold on to a job and offer a lifeline to a young man on his same bloodstained path. In Socrates's battle-scarred wisdom, there is hope of turning the world around in this "powerful, hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction" (Booklist).
Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley is one of America’s most celebrated writers. He was given the 2020 National Book Award’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, named a Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America and honored with the Anisfield-Wolf Award, a Grammy, a PEN USA Lifetime Achievement Award, the Robert Kirsch Award, numerous Edgars and several NAACP Image Awards. He is the author of more than sixty critically acclaimed books that cover a wide range of ideas, genres, and forms including fiction (literary, mystery, and science fiction), political monographs, writing guides including Elements of Fiction, a memoir in paintings, and the young adult novel 47. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages. He has published fiction and nonfiction in The New Yorker, Playboy, and The Nation. As an executive producer, he adapted his novel, The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, for AppleTV+ and serves as a writer and executive producer for FX’s Snowfall.
In 2020 he was a recipient of a lifetime achievement award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and from the National Book Foundation. In 2013, he was inducted into the New York State Writers Hall of Fame, and he is the winner of numerous awards, including an Edgar Award, an O. Henry Award, the Mystery Writers of America's Grand Master Award, PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award, a Grammy Award, and several NAACP Image Awards. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages.
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