“Johnson is one of the most daring and comic writers of this generation.”
—Ishmael Reed
“I’ve had some quibble with just about every novel I’ve read of late. A book will have style, but no plot. Or both, but no meaning. Oxherding Tale, however, has everything. This includes laughs.”
—Los Angeles Times
“A wonderfully funny, erotic, bittersweet story of the hero’s travels from slavery to freedom….Johnson presents a fable about racial difference and what it needs to be and needs not to be….[He] doesn’t make light of the load, but makes the burden of its telling sweeter with Dickensian twists of plot and with outrageous characters.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“A true storyteller…Oxherding Tale is a ‘classic’ in the noblest sense.”
—John Gardner
“Oxherding Tale is a parable that at once creates anger within enlightenment, delight within dismay, and tempers it all with a wry humor. Charles Johnson shows great skill.”
—Los Angeles Daily News
“Johnson’s second novel shows a large talent under superb control.”
—Library Journal
“A work of courage and compassion, virtuosity and intelligence…Johnson skillfully avoids melodramatic platitudes while creating suspense and comedy, pathos and nostalgia. In the process he invents rich variations on questions about sex, race, and class.”
—The Village Voice
“Utterly original and often hilarious…Johnson masterfully explores the relationship between identity, freedom, and personal responsibility.”
—Newsday
“[A] daring, extravagant novel….A memorable book.”
—The New Yorker
“I laughed. I cried. I thought. I marveled. Oxherding Tale is a beautiful book. Its language is extraordinary, its writing is crisp, clean, smooth, even in its complexity, and terribly affecting. It is masterful craft of the highest order.”
—August Wilson