Middle Passage: Picador Collection

Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, cartoonist, screenwriter, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. A MacArthur fellow, his fiction includes Night Hawks, Dr. King's Refrigerator, Dreamer, Faith and the Good Thing, and Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. In 2002 he received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Seattle.

"Essence"A vivid and compelling work.

"The Washington PostMiddle Passage" is both unexpectedly funny and highly intellectual.

"NewsdayMiddle Passage" resonates...a spirited adventure tale daringly spun off the realm of myth.

"USA Today"A fascinating allegory of the way black and whites came together in this country...Johnson's remarkable novel challenges us.

"The New York Times Book Review"Heroic...engrossing...in the tradition of "Billy Budd" and "Moby Dick,.".fiction that hooks into the mind.

"Chicago Tribune"Long after we'd stopped believing in the great American novel, along comes a spellbinding adventure story that may be just that.

"Publishers Weekly"A savage parable of the black experience in America...blending confessional, ship's log, and adventure...in luxuriant, intoxicating prose.

"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.

"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.