Chain-Gang All-Stars

Chain-Gang All-Stars is set in a near-future America where private prisons run Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a wildly popular blood sport in which incarcerated people fight to the death for a shot at release. Loretta Thurwar is the program's biggest star, three matches from freedom, and Hamara Stacker is her partner in combat and in love. Adjei-Brenyah moves between the arena, the crowds who watch, the executives who profit, and the activists who protest, building a portrait of a country that has monetized its own cruelty. Footnotes throughout cite real statistics about solitary confinement, the death penalty, and the for-profit prison industry, so the dystopia keeps collapsing into the present. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award and named one of the New York Times' top ten of the year.