“The book deals in hard things—being a young Black man in America, being caught in the middle of violence and revolution, not knowing where you fit among the fight. It’s about love, and death, and grief; about ambivalence in the face of fear and loss. But part of what makes this book feel like magic is that it tackles those hard things with humor—the kind that crackles in the characters and on the court, in roadside motels and college campuses; the kind that captures the absolute absurdity of human existence; that feels urgently, achingly, riotously alive.”