A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' CHOICE
Recommended by the New York Times Book Review - Chicago Tribune - The New Yorker - TIME - Harper's Bazaar - Los Angeles Times - Boston Globe - Vulture - The Millions - Goodreads - the Atlanta Journal-Constitution - Garden & Gun - Literary Hub - Chicago Review of Books - Publishers Weekly - Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal . . . and more!
"The Occidental Book of the Dead is an adrenaline-filled high-wire act. It's funny when it needs to be, hard to track when it wants to be, and meticulously engineered at every moment. It is storytelling from a writer who knows the fundamentals of the craft well enough that he can break all the rules and still build a propulsive story. The end result is a sharp, unapologetic art-house novel full of gravitas, humor and heartbreaking revelations about the Black American experience and the thousand and one ways our nation can shatter Black souls. It will not be a novel for everyone. It doesn't want to be. And that's a large part of why it succeeds." - Jason Mott, The New York Times Book Review
"This flamboyantly ambitious novel, which takes place in a version of Atlanta known as Atlantis, follows the life of George Washington Jonson, a Black cop with a liking for white women. The story's pivotal event is the police shooting of a white teen-ager; a coverup ensues, in which Jonson, at first, participates. The buildup to and aftermath of the shooting are narrated in a variety of forms, including a four-hundred-page memoir within the novel, ostensibly written by Jonson. Each retelling sifts through layers of extortion and betrayal to trace the complex loyalties connecting white and Black cops, and the cost of the upward mobility afforded by putting on 'blue skin.'" - The New Yorker
"This one is really tricky to explain, which is why it's great. Metafictional hijinks are afoot but it's unpacking these really serious ideas about race and trauma and the disparate experiences of America. This is like if you took Erasure by Percival Everett, mashed it with Homey by Danez Smith, mashed it with Transcription by Ben Lerner . . . but those comps almost don't do it credit because T. Geronimo Johnson has this sensibility of his own. I'm really, really excited for this one." - MJ Franklin, The New York Times Book Review podcast
"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
"Johnson pulls no punches, from his dedication ("Dedicated to the future memory of white supremacy") to his "Axknowledgements," the first line of which is, "All praise be to the artists unknown to you." The pages in between, all 650-plus of them, read like Colson Whitehead on acid, and that is meant as a compliment from this privileged white middle-aged woman. It's strong stuff, yet the dazzling writing makes it go down easy." - Bethanne Patrick, Los Angeles Times
"[An] eagerly awaited doorstop: T. Geronimo Johnson's The Occidental Book of the Dead, among the year's wildest, spirals out an unnerving (and unsettlingly funny) police story of race in Atlanta, splitting its narrative into branching books, all about a seemingly clear shooting." - Chicago Tribune
"A homage to deadpan police procedurals, pulp novels, and a searching meditation on the enduring stain of slavery." - TIME
"Immersive and thought-provoking." - The Guardian
"The best title of the season is a massive crime novel in present-day Atlanta. Linguistically playful, it's a deep exploration of racism." - Cory Oldweiler, The Boston Globe, Best Fall Books
"Johnson's prose is nothing short of spectacular. . . . In Jonson, [he] has created one of the most unforgettable characters in recent U.S. literature. . . . This is a stunning novel, one that asks us to consider who we really are as Americans, not who we tell ourselves we are. Johnson has proven that he is one of the country's finest writers of fiction, and this is his tour de force." - Michael Schaub, The Boston Globe
"Kaleidoscopic, jarring, voluble, coruscating, frenetic, dense, caustic, volatile, horny, irreverent, exhortative, bonkers, brilliant: That's the arsenal of adjectives I mustered to describe T. Geronimo Johnson's The Occidental Book of the Dead. . . . [It's] a novel that demands patience, stamina, forbearance. It repeatedly pokes its finger in your chest and sometimes pokes a couple in your eyes, Three Stooges style. It's a murder mystery of sorts, but not a cozy one. Johnson's primary interest is in the conflicted, convoluted soul of America. . . . This is a chainsaw satire, a ripping send-up that takes down Black and white and liberal and conservative pieties alike, with the same spinning blade." - Garden & Gun
"This is the literary crime epic of the year, possibly of the century. T. Geronimo Johnson has woven an emotional powerhouse, a complex conspiracy thriller, a searing indictment of policing, a startling coda on the limits of reform, and a metatextual commentary on the nature of confession." - Molly Odintz, Crimereads
"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 offers a witty, protean novel that delves into the racial and social complexities of the South through the lens of police corruption and one Black cop's reckoning with his own choices." - Library Journal (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)
"The Occidental Book of the Dead is a tour de force that magnifies the messiness of life on a grand scale. . . Part police procedural (think The Wire), part social novel (echoes of Richard Ellison's Invisible Man abound). . . The novel, which brims with compassion and insight, calls to mind Richard Price's Clockers and Percival Everett's Erasure." - Elaine Szewczyk, Publishers Weekly
"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
"Ambitious... employs an unusual structure to tell a gritty crime story." - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
"Johnson has written a self-consciously epic crime novel. Compelling, funny, and wise." - The Daily Mail (UK)
"Dazzling, dizzying . . . This book's sweep is hard to convey. A furious, sly postmodern mystery about a deeply corrupt society, it reads like what you might get if Ishmael Reed and Walter Mosley had scripted Chinatown. Challenging and enthralling in equal measure, The Occidental Book of the Dead is a stunning novel." - The Irish Times
