Middle Passage
By Charles Johnson
(Scribner, Paperback, 9780684855882, 224pp.)
Publication Date: July 1, 1998
Other Editions of This Title: Google eBook, Paperback, Prebound
Categories: Historical - General
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Winner of the National Book Award
“A novel in the honorable tradition of Billy Budd and Moby Dick…heroic in proportion… fiction that hooks into the mind.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Long after we’d stopped believing in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that.” — Chicago Tribune
“It’s a joy to read fiction in which there is a cultivated vision at work...the greatest victory of Dreamer is the light it shines on the life of Martin Luther King Jr.”
—Dennis McFarland, The New York Times Book Review
“In their remarkable simplicity these stories reach into...the African American experience with surprising freshness and the fluency of years of gathered wisdom. This book is a deeply satisfying reading adventure.” — Black Issues Book Review
Dr. Charles Johnson, a 1998 MacArthur fellow, is the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Endowed Professor of English at the University of Washington in Seattle. His fiction includes Dr. King's Refrigerator, Dreamer, and Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. In 2002 he received the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Seattle.
Chicago Tribune Long after we'd stopped believing in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that.
The New York Times Book Review Heroic...engrossing...in the tradition of Billy Budd and Moby Dick...fiction that hooks into the mind.
San Francisco Chronicle A rousing adventure yarn that resonates with and echoes the spirit of early sea stories...Johnson has fashioned a tale of travel and tragedy, yearning and history, and done so from a different, rarely explored viewpoint....Middle Passage is a story of slavery, often brilliant in its structure and riveting in the way it's told.
The Washington Post Middle Passage is both unexpectedly funny and highly intellectual.
Los Angeles Times Book Review Highly readable...by turns mimicking historical romance, slave narrative, picaresque tale, parable, and sea yarn, indebted to Swift, Coleridge, Melville, and Conrad.
Essence A vivid and compelling work.
USA Today A fascinating allegory of the way black and whites came together in this country...Johnson's remarkable novel challenges us.
Publishers Weekly A savage parable of the black experience in America...blending confessional, ship's log, and adventure...in luxuriant, intoxicating prose.
Newsday Middle Passage resonates...a spirited adventure tale daringly spun off the realm of myth.
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