Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Catacombs

The Catacombs

Demby, William
Biggers, Jeff

Paperback

Classic FictionGeneral FictionLiterary Fiction

Publisher Price: $17.00

ISBN13: 9798217007332
Publisher: Vintage
Published: Jan 13 2026
Pages: 240
Weight: 0.55
Height: 0.81 Width: 5.11 Depth: 7.91
Language: English
An expat in Rome makes his way as a writer in this gripping and genre-defying novel, first published in 1965 by a rediscovered great of Black American literature.

One of the great novelists of the last 100 years. --Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo

In this masterpiece of metafiction set in the Rome of the tumultuous 1960s, Black American expatriate Bill Demby narrates his attempts to write a novel about his friend Doris, another Black American working as one of Elizabeth Taylor's handmaidens in the filming of Cleopatra. Utterly dependent upon Doris for the development of his novel, Demby is both a participant in and observer of her life as she begins an affair with an Italian count. Demby's growing emotional and artistic involvement in the tumultuous affair of his character-friend leads him on an existential quest for the meaning of truth and fiction, both lived and created, in a world torn by the social upheaval of the early sixties.

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