American Fiction

Novelist Thelonious 'Monk' Ellison's books are well-reviewed and well-regarded, but they don't sell well, and he's in a rut. Despairing at the way other black authors are marketed and the way they're expected to write and behave, he pens a tough crime novel under a pseudonym, as a protest, expecting it to disappear.

But things get out of hand when publishers love it, and his alter ego, the wanted felon Stagg R Leigh, is offered a huge advance.