Review by Booklist Review
When charismatic, Mississippi-born drifter Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson lands in the Independent People's Democratic Republic of Guanaya, a fictional African country at a political and economic crossroads, he hopes to at last find a deep connection to his heritage and a place he can call home. Instead, bearing a remarkable resemblance to the beleaguered prime minister, he's selected by a group of motley cabinet members to travel as the prime minister's double on a trip to America. Razor-sharp dialogue, absurdist situations, caricatures of politicians, activists, and celebrities all comprise Killens' epigrammatic send-up of twentieth-century politics and the illogical societal realities that stem from racism and global affairs of state. Though bitingly witty and full of laugh-out-loud humor, this novel remains true to what legendary satirist Ishmael Reed describes in his foreword as Killens' mission, "adumbrating the racist evil that dogs the American soul." Vividly and skillfully written, this vibrant, long-missing novel, published 34 years after the death of this Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer, civil rights activist, and key figure in the Black Arts Movement, is certain to be a timeless classic of satirical fiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Killens (1916--1987), a member of the Black Arts movement and author of And Then We Heard the Thunder, cleverly satirizes 1960s American politics in this sharp thriller. Jaja Okwu Olivamaki, prime minister of the Independent People's Democratic Republic of Guanaya, sees his country lifted from obscurity after a great quantity of the radioactive metallic element cobanium is found there, making it the newest front in the Cold War. African-American musician James Jay Leander Johnson travels to Guanaya to learn "the folk songs of his people," only to become a suspect in a plot to murder Olivamaki. Johnson's life takes an even stranger detour after his resemblance to his supposed target leads to his being asked to impersonate the nation's leader, a pretense he must maintain on a state visit to the U.S. Killens is pointed in his barbs; when the imposter is asked his opinion of Malcolm X, he declares he believes in the same kind of nonviolence the U.S. does: "I believe we should keep everybody nonviolent, even if we have to blow them off the face of the earth, in the American tradition." Throughout, Killens maximizes the potential of his plot with outrageous humor. Readers will be glad to find this gem unearthed. (July)
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Review by Library Journal Review
This long-lost novel by a founding father of the Black Arts Movement takes us to the 1980s, as Mississippi musician Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson travels the world, finally arriving in the fictitious Independent People's Democratic Republic of Guanaya in Africa. There, he's asked to stand in for the lookalike prime minister when a coup threatens after the discovery of a valuable radioactive element. With a 30,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
This previously unpublished novel by a late, venerated Black novelist is a free-wheeling satire of late-20th-century racial politics in both post-colonial Africa and post--civil rights America. Killens (1916-1987) was in his crowded lifetime a World War II soldier, activist, mentor, teacher, screenwriter, polemicist, and novelist. One of his most notorious works was The Cotillion (1971), which trenchantly lampooned the upper reaches of the African American middle class, and that side of Killens comes through even more boisterously in this posthumous novel. Its protagonist is James Jay Leander Johnson, an itinerant musician from the Deep South whose restless wanderings have led him to the mythical African country of Guanaya, where he seeks cultural communion with "the Motherland." Meanwhile, Guanaya's stature as "the most insignificant of nations" is stunningly transformed by its discovery of cobanium, "a radioactive metallic element five hundred times more powerful and effective than uranium." The country's charismatic prime minister, Jaja Olivamaki, is being supplicated by the American government to negotiate an alliance over this earth-shaking discovery. But neither he nor his cabinet trust the U.S. to have their country's best interests at heart. Which is where Jimmy Jay Johnson, performing folk music throughout Guanaya, comes in. Tall-and-handsome Jimmy Jay looks so much like the tall-and-handsome P.M. that he is recruited to put on a false beard and pretend to be Olivamaki on a high-profile diplomatic visit to America. Though set sometime in the 1980s, Killens' novel comes across as a compendium of social and political phenomena in American race relations, whether it's Pan-Africanism, the Ku Klux Klan, or, of course, the Black upper middle class. Most if not all are treated with scathing irreverence and acerbic wit. At times, the shakiest element in Killens' situation comedy is the extent to which Johnson's masquerade holds up as his iteration of the African leader becomes something of a folk hero among Black Americans and a target for White racists. And there are times when the plot gallops ahead of Killens' ability to control it. But even at its most unruly, the go-for-broke narrative style grows on you, and the author himself occasionally materializes in a walk-on role, lending the book a metafictional feel. An audacious final testament of an underappreciated craftsman. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
