Ishmael Reed

Author Information
Ishmael Reed's Latest Book

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  • Bibliography:
    22 Books
  • First Book:
    August 1972
  • Latest Book:
    July 2023
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Book List in Order: 22 titles

  • Mumbo Jumbo

    Ishmael Reed's inspired comic fable of the ragtime era - hailed by Harold Bloom as one of the five hundred greatest books of the Western canon America, 1920s. A plague is spreading, and it's spreading fast, from New Orleans to Chicago to New Y...

  • The Last Days of Louisiana Red

    "The Last Days of Louisiana Redblends paradox, hyperbole, understatement and signifyin' so expertlyyou can almost hear a droll black voice telling the tales as you readit." - The New Republic

    When Papa LaBas (private eye, noonday HooDoo, an...

  • Flight to Canada

    Ishmael Reed has created a sharp, wildly funny slave’s-eye view of the Civil War.Three slaves infected with Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisf...

  • Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down

    “Folks. This here is the story of the Loop Garoo Kid. A cowboy so bad he made a working posse of spells phone in sick. A bullwhacker so unfeeling he left the print of winged mice on hides of crawling women. A desperado so onery he made the Pope cry...

  • The Freelance Pallbearers

    Ishmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off to a land they have never heard of, a crazy, ominous kingdom called HARRY SAM--a never-never land so weirdly out-of-whack that only reality itself could be stranger. Venturing into this risky ...

  • Yardbird Lives!

  • The Terrible Twos

    The Terrible Twos is a wickedly funny, sharp-edged fictional assault on all those sulky, spoiled naysayers needing instant gratification - Americans. Ishmael Reed''s sixth novel depicts a zany, bizarre, and all-too-believable future where mankind'...

  • God Made Alaska for the Indians

  • Reckless Eyeballing

    Supported by powerful director Jim Minsk and preeminent playwright Jack Brashford, Ian Ball, a Black southern playwright hated by theater feminists, hopes to redeem himself with a play in which women have all the good parts...



  • Writin' Is Fightin'

    This gathering of Ishmael Reed's essays, book reviews, and editorials brings us into the ring of debate where Reed boxes his best match against American culture. The champion of controversy challenges the arts as he see them, both from the inside and...

  • Cab Calloway Stands in for the Moon

  • The Terrible Threes

    This adventure into the world of offbeat humor and on-target social criticism is a vision of America in the not-too-distant future, a portrait of a fairy-tale gone awry.

    In The Terrible Threes, Ishmael Reed proves that he is one of the most...

  • Shrovetide in Old New Orleans

  • Japanese by Spring

    Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological clim...

  • The Free-Lance Pallbearers

    Ishmael Reed's electrifying first novel zooms readers off to the crazy, ominous kingdom of HARRY SAM a miserable and dangerous place ruled for thirty years by Harry Sam, a former used car salesman who wields his power from his bathroom throne. In a l...

  • POW-Wow

    Using the yardstick that a short story is any fiction under 15,000 words, Ishmael Reed--with the assistance of Carla Blank--has assembled an anthology that includes work ranging from animal stories of the Northwest Coast Eyaks to African-American fol...

  • Pow-Wow: Charting the Fault Lines in the American Experience: Short Fiction from Then to Now

    Using the yardstick that a short story is any fiction under 15,000 words, Ishmael Reed—with the assistance of Carla Blank—has assembled an anthology that includes work ranging from animal stories of the Northwest Coast Eyaks to African-Am...

  • Juice!

    In 2010, the Newseum in Washington D.C. finally obtained the suit O. J. Simpson wore in court the day he was acquitted, and it now stands as both an artifact in their "Trial of the Century" exhibit and a symbol of the American media's endless hunger ...

  • Conjugating Hindi

    California is still the world's biggest hideout. The only thing more western is the Pacific Ocean, where, if the Big One happens, California might find a home at the bottom.

    One of those hiding out is Peter Bowman, a former army brat, and l...



  • The Terrible Fours

    When Ishmael Reed wrote The Terrible Twos about the American infantile need for instant gratification, he could not have realized that in June 2020, journalist Nicole Wallace would be referring to a president as a "toddler." Reed had parodied other g...

  • The Fool Who Thought Too Much

    It's tough to be a buffoon when the Age of Reason is trying to downsize your job. When the King's Fool dies unexpectedly, a professional buffoon tries to move up the ranks and grab the top slot. But the politics involved in becoming a court jester ar...

  • The Man Who Haunted Himself

    Dr. Douglass Garnett is about to break all the rules to save himself—and push mankind into the future.He's one of America's most brilliant neuroscientists. He's also Black and dying of cancer. But he has a plan—a brain transfer. He'll put...

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Ishmael Reed has published 22 books.

Ishmael Reed does not have a new book coming out soon. The latest book, The Man Who Haunted Himself, was published in July 2023.

The first book by Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo, was published in August 1972.

No. Ishmael Reed does not write books in series.
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