[Drew]

Amazon.com: Oxherding Tale: A Novel: Books: Charles Johnson



Seriously, buy this book. It's my favorite novel I was introduced to in college, and a cross between a metaphorical retelling of bhuddists' "ten oxherding pictures" and a systematic inversion of all the traditional aspects of a slavery captivity narrative (i.e - the narrator is the product of a white mother and a black father, and is raised more-or-less as the biological son of the plantation owner.

The gist is the book opens with the plantation owner getting smashed on moonshine on his front porch with his favorite slave, until they get so drunk that, too afraid to face their own wives, the plantation owner suggests they swap places. The plantation mistress doesn't immediately realize that it's not her husband who just climbed into bed with her, with the predictable consequences.

Read the first couple pages here - Johnson has one of the absolute best narrative voices I've ever run across. It's casual, disarming, down-home, and very much like sitting back with the narrator on a front porch with a cool drink and listening to him tell you his story. Also, Horace Bannon, The Soulcatcher, is bar-none the greatest "villian" I've run across in a contemporary work of fiction.

Amazon Online Reader : Oxherding Tale