Flight to Canada

Reed, Ishmael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0684847507 ISBN 13: 9780684847504

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998

Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave's-eye view of the Civil War. Three slaves infected with Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisfied with leaving slavery halfway, one of the trio has vowed to go the whole distance to Canada; his master, Arthur Swille, determined to recover his property, pursues, hot on Raven Quickskill's trail. With myth-bending ingenuity, Reed merges history, fantasy, political reality, and high comedy as he parodies the fugitive slave narrative: the slave-poet Quickskill flees to Canada on a nonstop jumbo jet; Abe Lincoln waltzes through slave quarters to the tune of "Hello Dolly"; the plantation mistress lies in bed watching the Beecher Hour on TV. Flight to Canada's preposterous episodes leap out from the pages of history to reveal a keen sense of America past and present.

Review:

Praise for Mumbo Jumbo in Penguin Modern Classics: A dazzling classic ... exhilarating ... like jazz, the novel feels improvisatory and ambitious [...] It is a funny book about conspiracy theories that nonetheless feels serious and true. A philosophical and ingenious American race satire (Guardian)

Ishmael Reed's extraordinary and expansive collage novel [is] a conduit for his surging torrent of interrelating arguments about race, religion, history, music and literature ... urgent, imaginative, hilarious, and deeply attuned to the exigencies of social and cultural capital (Times Literary Supplement)

Groundbreaking ... Ishmael Reed is a major figure in American letters (The Paris Review)

About the Author:

Ishmael Reed grew up in working-class neighborhoods in Buffalo, New York. He attended Buffalo public schools and the University of Buffalo. As well as being a novelist, poet, and essayist, he is a songwriter, television producer, publisher, magazine editor, playwright, and founder of the Before Columbus Foundation and There City Cinema, both located in Northern California. He lives in Oakland, California.