Anansi Boys is a contemporary fantasy novel about Fat Charlie Nancy, a quiet and anxious man whose life begins to unravel after his embarrassing father dies and leaves behind a family secret: he was Anansi, the trickster spider-god of West African mythology. Neil Gaiman turns Charlie’s ordinary London life into a comic and unsettling collision of gods, stories, family history, and buried identity when he discovers the existence of his charismatic brother, Spider, whose arrival brings magic, disorder, confidence, and danger into everything Charlie has tried to keep under control. The novel blends urban fantasy, mythology, dark humor, and family drama, using the figure of Anansi to explore inheritance, shame, storytelling, and the complicated ways children carry their parents with them. As Charlie is pulled deeper into a world where old gods still interfere with modern lives, the story keeps asking what a person can become when the family story he has avoided turns out to be the key to who he is.
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Headline Review
Year published: 2006
Number of pages: 496
Original language: English
Title in original language: Anansi Boys