The Sport of the Gods
- First published
- 1902
- Reading level
- Easy
- Price
- Free
About the book
"The Sport of the Gods" by Paul Laurence Dunbar is a novel published in 1902. When a Black butler is wrongly convicted of theft, his family is forced to flee the South for New York City. There, they encounter the harsh realities of Northern urban life as their dreams unravel. The father languishes in prison while his children fall into dangerous paths and his wife struggles to survive. This examination of early twentieth-century African American life explores how injustice and urban pressures can destroy a family.
- Domestic fiction
- African American families
- Rural-urban migration
Updated September 2026. Public domain in the USA. Text and summary from Project Gutenberg eBook #17854. The Sport of the Gods on Wikipedia.
