Named one of the GREAT AMERICAN NOVELS of the last 100 years by The Atlantic

The 50th anniversary edition of the classic, freewheeling novel by one of the most iconic satirists of our timenow with a new introduction by the author.

Mumbo Jumbo is a mixtape, a collage, a palimpsest…Even if it didn’t have an eerie bearing on our modern politics, itd be worth reading simply for the pleasure of spending time in Reeds roving mind.The Atlantic

Part vision, part satire, part farce A wholly original, unholy cross between the craft of fiction and witchcraft. The New York Times

It is the 1920s in New York City and an epidemic known as Jes Grew is sweeping the nationa dancing plague, irresistible, joyful, and undeniably Black. Naturally, the powers-that-be are having none of it. A repressive conspiracy is operating in the shadows, and it is dead set on squelching Jes Grew and its CarriersBlack artists and musiciansby any means necessary.

So begins the classic novel by Ishmael Reed, the iconic satirist whose contributions to American literature have drawn praise from the likes of James Baldwin and Harold Bloom. Mumbo Jumbo is an ingenious deconstruction of Western civilizationa cinematic collage that mixes portraits of historical figures and incidents with sound bites on subjects ranging from ragtime to Greek philosophy. Now with a new introduction by the author, this timeless and crucial work of twentieth-century fiction is ready to be discovered by a new generation of readers.