Buying Options
Print List Price: | $10.95 |
Kindle Price: | $9.99 Save $0.96 (9%) |
Sold by: | Penguin Group (USA) LLC Price set by seller. |
Your Memberships & Subscriptions

Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.

![Fences by [August Wilson, Lloyd Richards]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51P-UzoCGuL._SY346_.jpg)
Follow the Authors
OK
Fences Kindle Edition
August Wilson (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Troy Maxson is a strong man, a hard man. He has had to be to survive. Troy Maxson has gone through life in an America where to be proud and black is to face pressures that could crush a man, body and soul. But the 1950s are yielding to the new spirit of liberation in the 1960s, a spirit that is changing the world Troy Maxson has learned to deal with the only way he can, a spirit that is making him a stranger, angry and afraid, in a world he never knew and to a wife and son he understands less and less. This is a modern classic, a book that deals with the impossibly difficult themes of race in America, set during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s.
Now an Academy Award-winning film directed by and starring Denzel Washington, along with Academy Award and Golden Globe winner Viola Davis.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPlume
- Publication dateAugust 6, 2019
- Reading age18 years and up
- File size1470 KB
![]() |
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fences leaves no doubt that Mr. Wilson is a major writer, combining a poet's ear for vernacular with a robust sense of humor, a sure sense for crackling dramatic incident, and a passionate commitment to a great subject."—The New York Times
"A blockbuster piece of theater, a major American play."—New York Daily News
"An eloquent play... a comedy-drama that is well-nigh flawless."—New York Magazine
"A moving story line and a hero almost Shakespearian in contour."—The Wall Street Journal
"A work of tremendous impact that summons up gratitude for the beauty of its language, the truth of its character, the power of its portrayals."—Chicago Tribune --This text refers to the paperback edition.
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : B07V64WTH9
- Publisher : Plume; Reissue edition (August 6, 2019)
- Publication date : August 6, 2019
- Language : English
- File size : 1470 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 119 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank: #153,205 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #49 in Black & African American Dramas & Plays
- #103 in United States Drama & Plays
- #129 in African American Studies
- Customer Reviews:
About the authors
August Wilson (1945–2005) authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of African Americans, decade by decade, over the course of the twentieth century. Mr. Wilson’s plays have been produced at regional theaters across the country, on Broadway and throughout the world. In 2003, Mr. Wilson made his professional stage debut in his one-man show How I Learned What I Learned.
Mr. Wilson’s work garnered many awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fences (1987) and The Piano Lesson (1990); a Tony Award for Fences; Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Jitney; and eight New York Drama Critics Circle awards for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars, Jitney and Radio Golf. Additionally, the cast recording of Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom received a 1985 Grammy Award, and Mr. Wilson received a 1995 Emmy Award nomination for his screenplay adaptation of The Piano Lesson. Mr. Wilson’s early works include the one act plays: The Janitor, Recycle, The Coldest Day of the Year, Malcolm X, The Homecoming and the musical satire Black Bart and the Sacred Hills.
Mr. Wilson received many fellowships and awards, including Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships in playwriting, the Whiting Writers Award and the 2003 Heinz Award. He was awarded a 1999 National Humanities Medal by the President of the United States, and received numerous honorary degrees from colleges and universities, as well as the only high school diploma ever issued by the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.
He was an alumnus of New Dramatists, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a 1995 inductee into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and on October 16, 2005, Broadway renamed the theater located at 245 West 52nd Street: The August Wilson Theatre. In 2007, he was posthumously inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
Mr. Wilson was born and raised in the Hill District of Pittsburgh, and lived in Seattle at the time of his death. He is survived by two daughters, Sakina Ansari and Azula Carmen Wilson, and his wife, costume designer Constanza Romero.
Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
There is more than enough reason to empathize with Maxson, who has been mistreated by his father, by society, and by his government. His anger and cynicism and harshness called to mind Langston Hughes’ immortal lines: what happens to a dream deferred? In Maxson’s case, it is a dream denied, and that denial festers in his soul, before leaching into the souls of his sons.
The play is a masterpiece. I read the last line and hoped that Troy Maxson had finally found peace on the other side of the fence he took so long to build.


Top reviews from other countries

Fences takes us on an unforgettable journey of love, deceit, loss and redemption. Filled with the unmistakable musicality and poetry of Wilson's writing, the play hits a chord that's close to home and close to our hearts. A thing that is easy to forget about Fences is the time period it was written in because the themes are simply timeless and handled with rigour, making it even more truthful to the reader. A long-standing friendship being threatened, a marriage being suddenly shaken, a father and son colliding all due to change and time taking their toll.
Each word of Wilson's seems to transcend the ink on the page and become part of us and that's part of Fences' (and most of Wilson's plays) magic.



