Dreamer

I am humbled by Dreamer and grateful for it. It is a transcendent, brilliant book . . . No other novelist among us today has quite Charles Johnson's philosophical weight, intellectual force or spiritual understanding . . . This is a book to sustain us - black and white, all of us - and so powerfully wrought as to endure in our literature so long as our literature itself endures -- DAVID GUTERSON
Like a skiff exploring history's more hidden currents, Johnson's poetic language drifts with care over the moiling currents of King's intellect, leaving in its wake a wonderful, prismatic novel, exhorting and testifying, but never preaching * * Guardian * *
Dreamer is not content merely to explore inequality and its pesky moral dilemmas; it goes farther, to hold up a mirror in which the interrelatedness of these apparent opposites can be viewed . . . a lively tale that leaves the reader with enormous concerns to contemplate . . . It's a joy to read fiction in which there is a cultivated vision at work -- Dennis McFarland * * New York Times * *
What unites Dreamer's diverse concerns - biography, politics, sociology, ethics - is its passionate desire to celebrate black history and to vindicate King - it is powerful as a moral tribute * * Sunday Times * *
His fiction transcends the immediate concerns of race and colour, and will find its place in the great body of literature produced by America's humanitarian tradition * * Literary Review * *
A beautiful and heartfelt novel of substance; intriguing and cleverly rendered -- Oscar Hijuelos
Compelling and profound, Dreamer is a book fully equal to its monumental subject, Martin Luther King Jr. Charles Johnson is one of the treasures of modern American literature -- Robert Olen Butler
Superbly told, fictionalised history is rarely so good * * The Times * *
Johnson is a superb craftsman . . . It is a measure of the rich profundity of Dreamer that its title could refer to any number of people: King himself, the narrator, the writer. As I closed the book, I rather hoped it referred to the reader * * Sunday Telegraph * *
Elegant, erudite and fearless * * Time Out * *