The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Dreamer, Charles Johnson

Dreamer

Charles Johnson

Reader Score

74%

74% of readers

recommend this book

Political visionary, human rights leader, preacher, scholar, martyr, Martin Luther King Jr. remains one of the most fascinating and significant historical figures. Now, Charles Johnson, a National Book Award-winning novelist, uses his keen insight into the end of the King years to produce a work of historical fiction that dares to change the very nature of the genre.

Set against the racial turbulence of the Civil Rights era, "Dreamer" is the first work of fiction to explore King's life. Yet the story, told by Mattew Bishop, one of King's devoted followers, is also a tale of doubles, warring brothers, envy, and inequality.

The novel introduces us to Chaym Smith, a man whose startling physical resemblance to King wins him the job of official stand-in. In the course of training Chaym to shield King from danger, Matthew comes to realize the philosophical magnitude of our greatest civil rights leader and the ambiguities within the Movement itself, and he— and we— are irreversibly changed. What makes one man great and the other just a mirror for greatness? What does it mean to be of African American descent in America? What does it take to change to face of a country forever?

"Dreamer" is a magisterial homage to the man who answered those questions for us. Readers will come away from this astonishing, mulitlayered novel with a knowledge of King, not only as a triumphant political leader, but as a father, husband, friend— and man. "Dreamer" is a dramatic tour de force that is personal, profound, and deeply inspiring.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Scribner Book Company
  • Publish Date: Feb 2nd, 1999
  • Pages: 240
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.01in - 5.24in - 0.53in - 0.44lb
  • EAN: 9780684854434
  • Categories: Historical - GeneralLiteraryAfrican American & Black - General

About the Author

Johnson, Charles: - Charles Johnson is a novelist, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, cartoonist, screenwriter, and professor emeritus at the University of Washington in Seattle. A MacArthur fellow, his fiction includes Night Hawks, Dr. King's Refrigerator, Dreamer, Faith and the Good Thing, and Middle Passage, for which he won the National Book Award. In 2002 he received the Arts and Letters Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives in Seattle.

More books by Charles Johnson

Book Cover for: Middle Passage, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: Soulcatcher and Other Stories, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: Fight the Stigma!, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: Faith and the Good Thing, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: A General History of the Pyrates, from Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence, to the Present Time. with the Remarkable Actions a, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: A General History of the Pyrates, From Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence, to the Present Time. With the Remarkable Actions a, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pirates, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: The Successful Pyrate. a Play. as It Is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, by Her Majesty's Servants. Written by Mr. Cha. Johnson., Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: Texts for Students, Volume 12, William (of Newburgh)
Book Cover for: The Grasses of Great Britain, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: The Sultaness: A Tragedy: As It Is Acted at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-Lane, by His Majesty's Servants. by Mr. Johnson, Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: The Cobler Of Preston (1716), Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: A Day in the Life of Jesus ': The Birth of the King ', Charles Johnson
Book Cover for: The Buccaneers and Marooners of America: Being an Account of the famous adventures and daring deeds of certain notorious freebooters of the Spanish Ma, Charles Johnson

Praise for this book

Dennis McFarland The New York Times Book Review It's a joy to read fiction in which there is a cultivated vision at work...the greatest victory of Dreamer is the light it shines on the life of Martin Luther King Jr.
John Marshall Seattle Weekly A deep look at the last two crisis years in the life of [King]...Johnson is an ambitious writer who is not satisfied with merely creating...passages of imagined thinking, however powerfully rendered.
Bruce Barcott The Seattle Times Masterfully rendered set piece...writing so assured and compelling...even when you already know the ending.
Patricia Holt San Francisco Chronicle With his novelist's instinct, [Johnson] grips us immediately with a stunning doppelgänger theme.
Andy Solomon The Boston Globe With compelling profundity and power Johnson takes us to a time, one within living memory, when a "dreamer" among us saw love as our redemptive principle and strongest weapon before he "died for our collective racial sins."