by Ishmael Reed
First published 1972
Bukka Doopeyduk lives under the iron fist of Harry Sam, a former car dealer who has ruled the nightmarish kingdom of HARRY SAM for three decades from his bathroom throne. The land seethes with contradictions. Cops patrol alongside beatniks. Black nationalists clash with white liberals. Sam's corrupt regime has turned the kingdom into a place of misery and constant danger. Bukka decides he has endured enough. He launches a crusade to overthrow the tyrant, leading a rebellion that threatens to topple Sam's bathroom empire. Reed constructs his story from explosive language that mixes standard prose with exaggerated dialect, street slang, and advertising copy. Long screams in capital letters punctuate the narrative. The rebellion becomes a wild satire that skewers power, corruption, and the absurdities of American society. Bukka's fight against Sam reveals the deeper struggle between those who resist oppression and those who profit from it.
Genres: satire, american-fiction, african-american
Vibes: darkly-humorous, subversive, thought-provoking
Tropes: anti-hero, dystopian, social-commentary
Setting: HARRY SAM
Period: 20th-century
116 pages · Paperback · A Bard Book, Avon Books
Content warnings: violence