"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." - Attica Locke, New York Times bestselling author of Bluebird, Bluebird " Nothing is what it seems in this spellbinding and profanely funny novel about race, police violence, and distorted narratives.
thrillingly plays on expectations of a sympathetic main character and a story of vindication by keeping the reader guessing at the truth and the nature of his protagonist. Fans of Susan Choi''s Trust Exercise will devour this." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Johnson''s hefty, free-wheeling, sharp-witted, disquieting third novel has a complexity that belies its straightforward premise. for all of its hard look at history, the book is as witty as it is unflinching, rich in comic riffs about pop music, misunderstandings around race, and where society does and doesn''t place its empathy. A swing-for-the-fences novel, both a gripping procedural and high literary study of American bigotry." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "Johnson, the highly acclaimed author of Welcome to Braggsville (2015), reinvents the trope of the good (sort of) cop seduced into corruption in this wildly unpredictable novel. a complex, often surprising morality tale." - Booklist (starred review) "This could be one of the big conversation books of the year, about a Black cop in Atlanta whose ''façade of white alliance'' falls apart in the late 90s and early 00s.
Johnson''s Welcome to Braggsville got plenty of comps to Paul Beatty and Percival Everett--but I think this one will plant Johnson firmly in their company." - Drew Broussard, Literary Hub''s Most Anticipated Books of the Year "Reading this novel is not unlike listening to an erudite satirist play the dozens in a marathon performance . Organic, plucky, smart, Welcome to Braggsville is the funniest sendup of identity politics, the academy and white racial anxiety to hit the scene in years." - New York Times Book Review "Great American writers whose names came to mind as I was reading Welcome to Braggsville: 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.
" - NPR''s Fresh Air "The most dazzling, most unsettling, most oh-my-God-listen-up novel you''ll read this year is called Welcome to Braggsville . T. Geronimo Johnson plays cultural criticism like it''s acid jazz. His shockingly funny story pricks every nerve of the American body politic . Welcome to Braggsville . It''s about time." - Ron Charles, The Washington Post "One of the most invigorating and least predictable novels of the year." - Kevin Brockmeier, award-winning author of The Brief History of the Dead "A rollicking satire .
Radical, hilarious, tragic, and all too relevant." - O magazine "Audacious, unpredictable, exuberant and even tragic, in the most classic meaning of the word . A heady mix of satire and hyperbole. At times, Welcome to Braggsville reads like a literary hybrid of David Foster Wallace and Colson Whitehead." - Los Angeles Times Book Review "In Welcome to Braggsville , 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 The Daily Show compressed into a narrative that recent headlines have made even more heartbreakingly resonant." - Anthony Marra, New York Times bestselling author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena "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." - Daily Beast "Johnson''s writing is often brilliantly comic, and Braggsville is a welcome new kind of southern novel." - Time magazine "Full of virtuosic sentences and coruscating satire . a brilliant and necessary read." - Buzzfeed "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." - New York Post "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." - San Francisco Chronicle "The unsettling racial satire America needs right now . Welcome to Braggsville 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." - Huffington Post "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." - LA Review of Books Welcome to Braggsville is a comic, rollicking, and biting story about the cultural clash between the rural South and a bastion of contemporary politically sensitive liberalism." - Christian Science Monitor.