03087cam a2200445 i 4500 2579778183 TxAuBib 20251002120000.0 250515s2025||||||||||||||||||||||||eng|u 2025010793 9780802146090 trade paper 18.00 0802146090 trade paper 18.00 9780802120144 0802120148 (OCoLC)1523284271 TxAuBib rda Thomas, Michael, 1967- The broken king [BOOK] : a memoir / Michael Thomas. First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition. New York : Grove Press, an imprint of Grove Atlantic, 2025. ©2025. 416 pages ; 24 cm. txt rdacontent n rdamedia nc rdacarrier The beautiful game -- Frankie, or the loving one -- What pip saw -- A peace -- Mercy -- Mercury days. "In 2007, Michael Thomas launched into the literary world with his award-winning first novel Man Gone Down, a beautiful and devastating story of a Black father trying to claim a piece of the American Dream. In his long-awaited encore and first work of nonfiction, The Broken King, Thomas explores fathers and sons, lovers and the beloved, trauma and recovery, soccer and baseball in a unique, urgent, and timeless memoir. The title is borrowed from T. S. Eliot's line in 'Little Gidding': 'If you came at night like a broken king,' and the work ponders the process of being broken. Akin to Baldwin's The Fire Next Time or Nabokov's Speak, Memory, Thomas's memoir unfolds through six powerful, interlocking and overlaying parts focusing on the lives of five men: his father--a philosopher, Boston Red Sox fan, and absent parent; his estranged, lawless older brother; his two sons growing up in Brooklyn; and always, heartbreakingly himself. At the center of The Broken King is the story of Thomas's own breakdown, a result of inherited family history and his own experiences, from growing up Black in the Boston suburbs to publishing a prizewinning novel with 'the house of Beckett.' Every page of The Broken King rings with the impact of America's sweeping struggle with race and class, education and family, and builds to a brave, meticulous articulation of a creative mind's journey into and out of madness.". 20260408. Thomas, Michael, 1967 August 21- Thomas, Michael, 1967 August 21- Family. Thomas family. African Americans New York (State) New York Biography. African Americans Massachusetts Boston Biography. African American authors New York (State) New York Biography. Fathers and sons New York (State) New York. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y) Biography. New York (N.Y) Biography. Boston (Mass) Biography. Autobiographies.