{"product_id":"the-occidental-book-of-the-dead","title":"The Occidental Book of the Dead","description":"\n\u003ctable align=\"center\" border=\"0\" cellpadding=\"2\" cellspacing=\"0\" width=\"100%\"\u003e\n\u003ctr\u003e\n\u003ctd class=\"productDetailSmallElements\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eReview Quotes\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"No one is having more fun with language than T. Geronimo Johnson. The way his mind works is endlessly entertaining, inviting us into a fantasia. Of men behaving badly in a world behaving worse. Of walking broken hearts with guns. Men, who are somehow, still, trying to bridge a cultural gap, to move toward some understanding, a shared humanity. Johnson's take on history, his political commentary, and humor read like jazz, as, with this book in particular, he plays with the novel as a form, bending notes, making new music.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAttica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Bluebird, Bluebird\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Reading this novel is not unlike listening to an erudite satirist play the dozens in a marathon performance . . . Organic, plucky, smart, \u003cem\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/em\u003e is the funniest sendup of identity politics, the academy and white racial anxiety to hit the scene in years.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Great American writers whose names came to mind as I was reading \u003cem\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/em\u003e: Tom Wolfe, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, H.L. Mencken, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Norman Mailer and Ralph Ellison. Johnson's timely novel is a tipsy social satire . . . a tour de force.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNPR's Fresh Air\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you'll read this year is called \u003ci\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/i\u003e. . . . T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it's acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic . . . \u003ci\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/i\u003e. It's about time.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRon Charles, The Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"One of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eKevin Brockmeier, award-winning author of The Brief History of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"A rollicking satire . . . Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eO magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word . . . A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, \u003cem\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/em\u003e reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/i\u003e, T. Geronimo Johnson has written a brilliant, blistering aria of an America divided by race, privilege, and politics. It's like a year's worth of \u003ci\u003eThe Daily Show\u003c\/i\u003e compressed into a narrative that recent headlines have made even more heartbreakingly resonant.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Biting, clever . . . Following four Berkeley students bent on a bit of guerrilla theater at a Civil War re-enactment in Georgia, Geronimo Johnson never runs out of targets for his satirical pen, from Old South apologists to solipsistic students in the grip of self-righteous political correctness.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDaily Beast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Johnson's writing is often brilliantly comic, and Braggsville is a welcome new kind of southern novel.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eTime magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Full of virtuosic sentences and coruscating satire . . . a brilliant and necessary read.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eBuzzfeed\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Southern Gothic meets West Coast political correctness with hilarious results in Johnson's new satirical novel. . . . An odyssey through Waffle Houses, evangelical churches and backyard barbecue's ensues, with attitudes about everything from race to social media getting skewered.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"As daring a literary high-wire act as has come along in some time. . . . frequently and unabashedly funny . . . [A] volatile mix of stinging satire, linguistic pyrotechnics and heartbreaking narrative.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSan Francisco Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"The unsettling racial satire America needs right now . . . \u003cem\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/em\u003e doesn't offer easy polemic or easier sentimentality, but a deep dive into the American race problem as muddled, terrifying, and absurd as the reality.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eHuffington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\"Stunning and poignant . . . Johnson's novel may not have the answer to the problems he's addressing, [but] it's clear that he's asking the right questions.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLA Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/em\u003e is a comic, rollicking, and biting story about the cultural clash between the rural South and a bastion of contemporary politically sensitive liberalism.\" - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eChristian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublisher Marketing\u003c\/strong\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrom the PEN\/Faulkner finalist and National Book Award longlisted author of \u003ci\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/i\u003e, comes this audacious and darkly funny literary crime masterpiece centered on a Black cop in an Atlanta precinct, whose façade of white alliance begins to crumble after a highly publicized murder\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGeorge Washington Jonson is determined to forge a new life. After growing up in one of Atlanta's poorest housing projects, he enlists in the U.S. Army and finds some relief serving abroad. When events lead him back home, he joins the police force. It's 1992, and Jonson is patrolling the streets he grew up on alongside his new partner, a shady legacy cop and self-described \"redneck\" who takes Jonson under his wing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter a decade on the job, Jonson has fashioned a new life in an affluent suburb with his white wife and stepson, though he's still policing his old neighborhood, and now tasked with training hot-headed rookie recruits. One night on patrol a split-second confrontation with a white teenager takes a violent turn. That single gunshot sets into motion a series of escalating lies.\u003cbr\u003eWhen the white-washed veneer of Jonson's life begins to crack, the story splits, presenting two contrasting versions of the American experience as he's forced to confront the history that shaped him and the compromises required of a good man in a broken system.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEmploying a bold, inventive structure and spanning two fraught decades, vividly evoking the complexities of the South, and written with his trademark virtuosic dissonance, \u003ci\u003eThe Occidental Book of the Dead\u003c\/i\u003e is a propulsive, pyrotechnic exploration of corruption and conspiracy in a nation divided.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eContributor Bio:\u003c\/strong\u003eJohnson, T Geronimo\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBorn and raised in the American South, T. Geronimo Johnson is the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eWelcome to Braggsville\u003c\/i\u003e, longlisted for the National Book Award and Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence; and \u003ci\u003eHold It 'Til It Hurts, \u003c\/i\u003ea finalist for the PEN\/Faulkner Award. He won the inaugural Joyce Carol Oates Award, the Rome Prize, Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and the William Saroyan International Prize, received his M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he later taught writing, and has held Stegner and Iowa Arts fellowships.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\n\n\u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/td\u003e\n\u003c\/tr\u003e\n\u003c\/table\u003e\n","brand":"William Morrow \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51496054063382,"sku":"9780063330542","price":38.4,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0857\/9910\/8886\/files\/9780063330542.jpg?v=1783051936","url":"https:\/\/lusper.myshopify.com\/products\/the-occidental-book-of-the-dead","provider":"Lusperbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}