Murder in Mississippi
John Safran
In 2009 John Safran, a controversial Australian journalist, spent an uneasy few days interviewing one of Mississippi's most notorious white supremacists. A year later, he hears that the man has been murdered by a young black man. But this is far from a straightforward race killing.
Safran flies back to Mississippi in a bid to discover what really happened, immersing himself in a world of clashing white separatists, black lawyers, police investigators, oddball neighbours and the killer himself. In the end, he discovers just how profoundly complex the truth about someone's life - and death - can be.
A brilliantly innovative true-crime story. Safran paints an engrossing and revealing portrait of race, money, sex and power in the modern American South.
'John Safran's captivating inquiry into a murder in darkest Mississippi is by turns informative, frightening and hilarious' - John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
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About John Safran
Reviews for Murder in Mississippi
Louis Theroux
A hilarious and bizarre story that leads where you least expect it. John Safran has for years been one of my favourite journalists - forever pushing the boundaries, funny, startling, a hurricane
Jon Ronson, author of The Men Who Stare at Goats and The Psychopath Test
Stunning
Men's Style
A winning combination of memoir, true crime and gonzo journalism . . . a compulsive summer read
Sunday Mail
One of the best pieces of sustained, rigorous journalism I've read in twenty years. It is absolutely magnificent - smart, and wry, and emotional too
Caroline Overington
Witty, insightful, compelling - In Cold Blood for our generation
Eddie Perfect
The elegance of this book is that its axis is a resounding 'perhaps' . . . It is this moral ambivalence that draws readers to the true crime genre, and Safran nails it
Weekend Australian
[Safran] has written a marvellous book which I cannot put down
Melbourne Observer
Mississippi is like a trampoline for [Safran's] eccentricities. But the form and content of the story bring out an unfamiliar side of him
Sydney Morning Herald
John Safran's captivating inquiry into a murder in darkest Mississippi is by turns informative, frightening and hilarious. It is enlivened by a swarm of creepy locals and a torrent of astonishing details
such as hedge clippers put to surgical use in the performance of an official autopsy
John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
'Murder in Mississippi is a page turner'
Felicity Garry, QC
The Times
Weaving a tale that is simultaneously about race, failed systems, money, sex, family and simple rage, Safran truly did lose a year in Mississippi, and getting lost with him is a joy
Kirkus reviews