Long Division

A Novel

By: Kiese Laymon

Narrated by: Ruffin Prentiss III, Jaime Lincoln Smith

Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Fiction

From the uthor of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.

Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two interwoven stories. In the first, it’s 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen “City” Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he’s sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.

Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book’s main characters is also named City Coldson—but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985-version of City, along with his friend and love interest, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future, and steals a laptop and cellphone from an orphaned teenage rapper called...Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these items with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet to protect his family from the Ku Klux Klan.

City’s two stories ultimately converge in the work shed behind his grandmother’s house, where he discovers the key to Baize’s disappearance. Brilliantly “skewering the disingenuous masquerade of institutional racism” (Publishers Weekly), this dreamlike “smart, funny, and sharp” (Jesmyn Ward), novel shows the work that young Black Americans must do, while living under the shadow of a history “that they only gropingly understand and must try to fill in for themselves” (The Wall Street Journal).

Critic reviews

"Sometimes metafiction—shape shifting, self-referential, time bending—can seem like a party favor. While it possesses many meta elements, this satisfying audiobook is at once a comic romp, a satire of fame in the Internet Age, and a look at race—set in rural Mississippi. This is the 2021 revision of the debut novel from Laymon, whose more recent memoir, HEAVY, was much lauded. The performances are masterful—persuasive, well paced and convincing. Ruffin Prentiss delivers the more linear first part, which includes a comic meltdown by protagonist City Colson on a televised quiz show. Jaime Lincoln Smith delivers the second part, in which the protagonist time travels with a mysterious book entitled LONG DIVISION in hand. Laymon is smitten with language, and this metafiction is fun."

Reclaiming power and rewriting the story

I was so glad that they picked narrators with a similar lyrical cadence and poetry to Kiese Laymon, the author. He writes a powerful two-part story about how you find liberation in the face of deep, deep oppression. The book pushes the bounds of respectability, likeability, resilience, and integration, and I believe reveals what sits in the belly of many Blacj children. Kiese is one of the most underestimated authors of our time.

The good, the bad, the ugly and the hopefulness of the past, present and future.

I absolutely loved "Long Division"! The unique storytelling style kept me engaged from start to finish. The characters were so well-developed and the plot was both thought-provoking and entertaining. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for a fresh and original read.

Layers of history, family, and suspense

I’m still listening to different parts cause it has great twists and I really like how the inner dialogue can be so poignant yet are narrating in simple thought process of the characters.

Quickly becoming one of my favorite authors, but...

I don't want to give too much away, so I will say that I think this was a great attempt as maybe his first fictional novel. I enjoyed the flow of the story, but I'm still trying to reconcile on what I expected or wanted this book to be. Laymon is a great story teller and maybe his next fictional novel will do a better job at fitting the pieces together. That's all I'm gonna say. Still a decent read and you should still experience it for yourself. 🤗🤗🤗

The narrator was great. The book was not.

“All things considered”, this book was awful. Confusing, limited character development, and it read like a middle school attempt at a story.