Middle Passage

Calhoun, a newly freed slave, accidentally boards a slave ship bound for Africa with a tyrannical, philosophizing captain and his rowdy, mutinous crew. ``Blending confessional, ship's log and adventure, the narrative interweaves a disquisition on slavery, poverty, race relations and an African worldview at odds with Western materialism,'' said PW of this National Book Award-winner . ``In luxuriant, intoxicating prose Johnson makes the agonized past a prism looking onto a tense present.'' (July)