Victor LaValle is the author of six previous works of fiction. He has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, the Shirley Jackson Award and the Key to Southeast Queens. He lives in New York with his wife and children and teaches at Columbia University.
‘I say this without exaggeration: it’s a masterpiece’
MAT JOHNSON
‘Absolutely compelling, completely thrilling, The Changeling overflows with menace, wonder and beauty’
KELLY LINK
‘[A] bewitching masterpiece’ USA TODAY
by victor lavalle
FICTION
The Ecstatic
Big Machine
The Devil in Silver
The Changeling
NOVELLAS
The Ballad of Black Tom
Lucretia and the Kroons
SHORT STORY COLLECTION
Slapboxing with Jesus
First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books
Copyright © Victor LaValle, 2017
First published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York
The moral right of the author has been asserted
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 78689 382 6
eISBN 978 1 78689 383 3
For Emily, Geronimo, and Delilah.
My Supreme Team.
Contents
3: Then Comes Baby in a Baby Carriage