One of the most poignant, funny, intelligent, frank and horribly addictive books you're likely to read all year

A remarkable, perhaps even unique, exercise in autobiography ... that aroma of authenticity that is the point of all great autobiographies: of which his, I rather think, is one

Stephen Fry is one of the great originals ... This autobiography of his first twenty years is a pleasure to read, mixing outrageous acts with sensible opinions in bewildering confusion ... That so much outward charm, self-awareness and intellect should exist alongside behaviour that threatened to ruin the lives of innocent victims, noble parents and Fry himself, gives the book a tragic grandeur and lifts it to classic status

He writes superbly about his family, about his homosexuality, about the agonies of childhood ... some of his bursts of simile take the breath away ... his most satisfying and appealing book so far

This is one of the most extraordinary and affecting biographies I have read . . . Stephen is . . . painfully honest when trying to grapple with his ever-present demons, and often, as you might expect, very funny

The writing is rhapsodic, intoxicated and very touching

[A] wonderful, self-lacerating autobiography

He has produced a remarkable autobiography . . . It makes gripping, sometimes unbearably sad, sometimes confusing reading . . . exhilarating, humane, zany, literary

No one can make you feel quite like Stephen Fry can . . . Funny and tormentedly frank

Hugely enjoyable . . . compulsively readable . . . Fry is excellent on the details of memory, too, and always able to embellish them with effortless erudition . . . this engaging, engrossing read is as honest a portrait of a young liar as one could hope to read

He is bubbly, funny and charming, and he gives his fans plenty of material if they want to speculate on why he is both so gifted and so wayward

The jokes . . . transcend the complexes of the joker, turning the Stephenesque into a national as well as a family treasure

Not so much an autobiography, more a way of life; discursive, funny, sometimes almost unbelievably sad, opinionated, nostalgic and very infectious

Fry can be funny about anything

So charming and so acute that one cannot help forgiving him

[Abdurraqib] has brought to pop criticism and cultural history not just a poet's lyricism and imagery but also a scholar's rigor, a novelist's sense of character and place, and a punk-rocker's impulse to dislodge conventional wisdom from its moorings until something shakes loose and is exposed to audiences too lethargic to think or even react differently

A book that brims with wonder and introspection while also honoring the significance and contributions of so many of the lives within it. Abdurraqib's passions are fully on display, and his widespread love is infectious in the best way possible, resulting in a masterwork that will not only move readers but will also send them off into their own personal rabbit holes of joy and wonder. This is, perhaps, the greatest gift a writer can give to his readers, and A Little Devil in America delivers it in spades

contemplative and scholarly... it is a joy to watch [Hanif's] mind work. In his new collection of interconnected essays, the author...excavates the bits of pop culture that often get paved over by white supremacy and our collective short-term memory. As for the parts we think we know - Abdurraqib has lots to say about Whitney Houston, Dave Chappelle, Green Book, Altamont, and more - it's his pointed and frequently personal re-examinations that set A Little Devil soaring

A vibrant showcase of sharp writing, Abdurraqib's A Little Devil in America attests that Black performance at its root is not simply an outward show of talent but also a means of survival. Read carefully. Abdurraqib's book is a challenge not to accept the usual explanations for the performances we witness.

Abdurraqib's great strength is his ability to present broad, canny observations through the lens of his personal experience, and his intimate exploration of what these specific moments meant to him as a Black Muslim coming of age in the US is what lingers long after you've finished the book

Abdurraqib has written a profound reflection on how Black performance is woven into the fabric of American culture... A Little Devil in America is a joyous ode to Black performance throughout history.

Throughout, Abdurraqib writes with urgency as he highlights what these performances mean, how they connect to his own feelings on grief, love and life,
and where they fit into American history.

From Josephine Baker to Soul Train to 'Sixteen Ways of Looking at Blackface,' Abdurraqib takes us on a wild ride through the history of Black performances, artists who crushed boundaries and carved out spaces for vigorous forms of African American expression. His is an intimate, conspiratorial voice, musically inflected, blending scholarship with anecdote, a 'waltz in a circular chamber of your homies and not-homies, shouting chants of excitement.'

Abdurraqib breathes new life into performers of significance in his life, both legendary and unsung

Abdurraqib is one of our finest writers period. A brilliant poet, essayist and cultural critic, he handles nostalgia, pop culture, Blackness and friendship in ways few writers can. Here, he examines Black America's changing views of Whitney Houston, the death of Michael Jackson, the spiritual properties of dancing, Afrofuturism and more. The early chapter "Sixteen Ways of Looking at Blackface" is a deeply humane piece of virtuoso writing. Longer dispatches are broken up by lyric, stream-of-consciousness pieces that refresh the soul and remind readers that there's little Abdurraqib can't do

In his new collection of essays, A Little Devil in America, the poet and critic Hanif Abdurraqib surveys this sprawl of expression. Here he charges himself with quite an ambitious task, pinning down and contextualizing the historic scale of such a globally significant cultural output, and it is one that would appear to call for an equally ambitious scope... Contemplations of legendary voices, sleights of hand, and charismatic choreographies are in dialogue with his own stories of grief, love, faith, and the search for freedom within the confinements of borders and a body...Abdurraqib expands the conception of "performance" to include the whole realm of behavior and culture...Playfulness, seduction, artistry, and reinvention: Abdurraqib wants us to know that these devilish gestures have their place, too, among the saints that line the corridors in this tiresome, captivating, and essential struggle

In A Little Devil in America, Abdurraqib walks readers through Black archives of dance, film, social struggle, and song as though these "intimate histories" of performance (as Saidiya Hartman calls them) could free us from anything that misses the beat. For this collection of essays, he does the work of a DJ: he digs through the crates, selects the most appropriately unexpected songs/topics/subjects, builds a collage between cuts and scratches, and presents his set. His books are soundscapes in print, and I was somehow listening to each sentence as if it were a breakbeat of personal narrative and socio-historical commentary...Hanif is one of the most exciting writers of his generation

Abdurraqib, known for his playful, intelligent sense of humor on Twitter, highlights amazing performances that shed light on societal constructions and moments of sheer joy his book about Black culture in America. Writing about joy is challenging; falling back on cliche is a constant temptation that Abdurraqib avoids in this insightful tome

That sense of limitlessness wraps itself around every essay in Abdurraqib's newest book, A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance. In it, he writes about Black performance in America-from Great Depression-era dance marathons to the enduring cool of Don Cornelius to the art of Mike Tyson entering a boxing ring-with both great reverence and rigorous analysis. The book, in the way Abdurraqib's work so often does, erects monuments to our should-be legends and our unignorable icons alike, and paints an expansive, deeply felt portrait of the history of Black artistry

This deft consideration of seemingly irreconcilable values, between the personal and private dimensions of performance, can be found throughout the essays in A Little Devil in America...Abdurraqib sees performance as a site of radical questioning, experimentation, and dream-making. This book is not a work of theory. It is sensual. We watch him watching his idols and we watch him dancing along with them, sometimes clumsily. If Brooks's goal is to make a case for performers' intellectualism, Abdurraqib's is to help us understand how they teach us to live richer, more embodied lives

Engrossing and moving ... A new, poetic take on essays that, I think, changes the game in many ways.

Astonishing, impressive ... the connections he makes point to the enduring influence of Black art ... a book as bold as it is essential

Abdurraqib writes with uninhibited curiosity and insight about music and its ties to culture and memory, life and death, on levels personal, political, and universal.

A towering work full of insightful observations about everything from the legacy of Nina Simone to the music of Bruce Springsteen... a powerful work about art, society, and the perspective through which its author regards both.

A joyful requiem - emphasis on joyful. Abdurraqib has written a guide for the living as well as a memorial for those we have lost.

As powerful and touching as anything I've read this year, and Abdurraqib has emerged as the Ta-Nehisi Coates of popular culture.