Flight to Canada

Ishmael Reed

ISBN 10: 0689707339 / ISBN 13: 9780689707339

Published by Scribner, 1989

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Flight to Canada
• Publisher: Scribner
• Publication Date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689707339
• ISBN 13: 9780689707339
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Brilliantly portrayed by a novelist with "a talent for hyperbole and downright yarning unequaled since Mark Twain", (Saturday Review), this slave's-eye view of the Civil War exposes America's racial foibles of the past and present with uninhibited humor and panache.

Mixing history, fantasy, political reality, and comedy, Ishmael Reed spins the tale of three runaway slaves and the master determined to catch them. His on-target parody of fugitive slave narratives and other literary forms includes a hero who boards a jet bound for Canada; Abraham Lincoln waltzing through slave quarters to the tune of "Hello, Dolly"; and a plantation mistress entranced by TV's "Beecher Hour". Filled with insights into the political consciences (or lack thereof) of both blacks and whites, Flight to Canada confirms Reed's status as "a great writer" (James Baldwin).

"A demonized Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book that reinvents the particulars of slavery in America with comic rage". -- The New York Times Book Review

"Wears the mantle of Baldwin and Ellison like a high-powered Flip Wilson in drag...a terrifically funny book". -- Baltimore Sun

About the Author

Ishmael Reed (b. 1938) is an acclaimed multifaceted writer whose work often engages with overlooked aspects of the American experience. He has published ten novels, including Flight to Canada and Mumbo Jumbo, as well as plays and collections of essays and poetry. He was nominated for a National Book Award in both poetry and prose in 1972. Conjure (1972), a volume of poetry, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and his New and Collected Poems: 1964–2006 (2007) received a Gold Medal from the Commonwealth Club of California. Reed has also received a Lila Wallace–Reader’s Digest Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Blues Song Writer of the Year award from the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame, a Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the National Institute for Arts and Letters, and a MacArthur Fellowship. Reed taught at the University of California, Berkeley, for thirty-five years and currently lives in Oakland, California.