Vengeance

Lazar (Evening's Empire; Sway) writes fiction, journalism, and, as he says, "sometimes a hybrid of both." This powerful new novel about a murder investigation, mass incarceration, and the monstrously powerful, profoundly entrenched structural racism in the United States, reads like the best investigative journalism. But it is also deeply literary—with vividly drawn characters, a compelling narrative arc, and philosophical reflections on the nature of justice and perception. The story is set at the massive Angola Prison system in central Louisiana, on land that had once been slave plantations. While visiting the penitentiary with a photographer friend documenting an inmate theater production, the narrator of the novel, who appears to be Lazar himself, befriends an inmate serving a life sentence for murder. Over the course of the novel, after talking over many months with everyone connected to the crime, the narrator is left with a baffling jumble of stories, claims, and counternarratives. The only thing that seems certain is that this inmate, Kendrick King, does not appear to deserve the punishment he has received.