Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed’s brilliantly satiric deconstruction of Western civilization, a racy and uproarious commentary on our society. In it, Reed, one of our pre-eminent African-American authors, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture.
Ishmael gives an overview of the book:
Mumbo Jumbo is Ishmael Reed’s brilliantly satiric deconstruction of Western civilization, a racy and uproarious commentary on our society. In it, Reed, one of our pre-eminent African-American authors, mixes portraits of historical figures and fictional characters with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Cited by literary critic Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred most significant books in the Western canon, Mumbo Jumbo is a trenchant and often biting look at black-white relations throughout history, from a keen observer of our culture.
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About Ishmael
Author of twenty-eight published books to date, Ishmael Reed is a novelist, poet, playwright, and essayist. He is also a publisher, editor of thirteen anthologies and numerous magazines, television producer, public media commentator, teacher and lecturer. His online...
Published Reviews
Nov.19.2007
“Mr. Reed has been revising the authorized edition of American history in all of his novels, to give the ghosts a chance to talk, and in The Terrible Twos he achieves a kind of jive transcendence...
Nov.19.2007
“Mumbo Jumbo is a nonfiction novel. When a novel includes a 104-item bibliography, you know we’re in new territory.”










Note from the author coming soon...