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Tim O'Brien

1075. Dorothy B Hughes - The Expendable Man


Published in the mid -1950s, this is very different.

Re-published by a UK imprint called Persephone Books (to which P subscribes) it is written by an (I assume) white woman about racism in the US at the time.

A black doctor, driving home for a family wedding, reluctantly picks up a young white hitchhiker and attempts to drive her to her destination. She is subsequently found murdered and suspicion falls on him, on purely racial grounds. The long narrative is his attempt to clear his name, which in the end he does.

It reminded me oddly of 'An American Marriage' written some fifty years later,


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