Pushkin And The Queen Of Spades

A Novel

Alice Randall

288 Pages

On-Sale Date: 02/05/2005

ISBN: 9780618562053

Trim Size: 5.500in x 8.500in x 1.050in

$16.95

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Windsor Armstrong has a problem: her brilliant boy, Pushkin X, has become a football superstar and is planning to marry a Russian lap dancer. In Windsor’s opinion, Pushkin is throwing away every good thing she has given him. When she was an unwed teen mother, Windsor attended Harvard, leaving her shady Detroit roots behind. She raised her son to be fiercely intelligent, well-spoken, and proud. Now he lives for pro football and a white woman of no account. Outraged by her son’s decisions but devoted to loving him right, Windsor prepares to give up her last secret: the identity of Pushkin’s father.

Alice Randall was born in Detroit and graduated from Harvard in 1981. After a start as a journalist in Washington, D.C., she moved to Nashville to become a country songwriter. The only African-American woman ever to write a number-one country song, she has had more than twenty songs recorded. She is also a screenwriter and has worked on adaptations of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Parting the Waters, and Brer Rabbit. Alice Randall is the author of The Wind Done Gone. She was awarded the Free Spirit Award in 2001 and the Literature Award of Excellence by the Memphis Black Writers Conference in 2002, and she was a finalist for the NAACP Image Award in 2002. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

“An utterly different, impressively original novel of ideas.” –Ben Dickinson Elle

“Her Margaret Mitchell parody kicked up a firestorm. Now she returns with a bold new novel.” –Troy Patterson Entertainment Weekly

“Randall lays bare racism and class consciousness (both black and white) with ruthless wit and riveting style.” –Cathleen Medwick O, The Oprah Magazine

“[Alice Randall’s] new novel is an impassioned aria . . . stunningly gutsy, literate and original.” –Heller McAlpin Los Angeles Times

“Linguistically exuberant . . . The heart of the tale is in the lyricism of the telling.” –Darryl Lorenzo Wellington The Washington Post

“Randall is a marvelous writer. . . . Pushkin and the Queen of Spades is a perfect book-club selection.” –Rebecca L. Ford The Chicago Tribune

“Randall’s novel is encyclopedic in its forms, stories, and range of emotions. . . . [Her] characters live and tell amazing stories.” –Mary A. McCay, chairwoman of the Loyola University English department, The Times-Picayune

“Unyielding in its intensity. . . . this is intentionally provocative stuff, designed to open your eyes and make your heart burn.” –Barbara Lloyd McMichael Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer —