The Times’s staff critics give their choices of the best fiction and nonfiction works of the year.
‘INSEPARABLE: THE ORIGINAL SIAMESE TWINS AND THEIR RENDEZVOUS WITH AMERICAN HISTORY’ by Prof. Huang Yunte was listed as Times Critics' Top Books of 2018.
After years of showcased servitude, the original “Siamese twins” Chang and Eng Bunker settled down in small-town North Carolina and adopted the lives of 19th-century Southern gentry — identifying with the white oppressor class, in other words, fathering at least 21 children between them, owning slaves and sending their sons to fight for the Confederacy. Huang is attuned to the ironies of their story in his incisive and riveting account.