Mumbo Jumbo
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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David Sadzin
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By:
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Ishmael Reed
About this listen
Ishmael Reed's inspired fable of the ragtime era, in which a social movement threatens to suppress the spread of black culture - hailed by Harold Bloom as one of the 500 greatest books of the Western canon
In 1920s America, a plague is spreading fast. From New Orleans to Chicago to New York, the "Jes Grew" epidemic makes people desperate to dance, overturning social norms in the process. Anyone is vulnerable and when they catch it, they'll bump and grind into a frenzy. Working to combat the Jes Grew infection are the puritanical Atonists, a group bent on cultivating a "Talking Android", an African American who will infiltrate the unruly black communities and help crush the outbreak. But PaPa LaBas, a houngan voodoo priest, is determined to keep his ancient culture - including a key spiritual text - alive.
Spanning a dizzying host of genres, from cinema to academia to mythology, Mumbo Jumbo is a lively ride through a key decade of American history. In addition to ragtime, blues, and jazz, Reed's allegory draws on the Harlem Renaissance, the Back to Africa movement, and America's occupation of Haiti. His style throughout is as avant-garde and vibrant as the music at its center.
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- Unabridged
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In his only work of political satire, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, John Steinbeck turns the French Revolution upside down as amateur astronomer Pippin Héristal is drafted to rule the unruly French. Steinbeck creates around the infamous Pippin the most hilarious royal court ever: Pippin's wife, Queen Marie, who "might have taken her place at the bar of a very good restaurant"; his uncle, a man of dubious virtue; and his glamour-struck daughter and her beau, the son of the so-called "egg king" of Petaluma, California.
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Political Satire at its Best!
- By Matthew G. Lara on 03-01-20
By: John Steinbeck, and others
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The Satanic Verses
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Sam Dastor
- Length: 21 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Inextricably linked with the fatwa called against its author in the wake of the novel’s publication, The Satanic Verses is, beyond that, a rich showcase for Salman Rushdie’s comic sensibilities, cultural observations, and unparalleled mastery of language. The book begins with two Indians plummeting from the sky after the explosion of their airliner, and proceeds through a series of metamorphoses, dreams and revelations.
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Use an audiobook to really enjoy Satanic Verses
- By David Edelberg on 11-24-12
By: Salman Rushdie
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The Patriots
- A Novel
- By: Sana Krasikov
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren, George Guidall
- Length: 22 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Florence Fein grows up in Brooklyn in the 1930s, in a family that is gaining a foothold in the middle class. At City College she becomes engaged politically with the left-leaning student groups, and eventually, in the midst of the Depression, she takes a job with a trade organization that has a position for her in Moscow. There, she falls in love with another expatriate American and has a son. Soon after, Florence is sent to a work camp and her son to an orphanage.
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Point of View of characters, past and present collide
- By Angela Adams on 01-29-19
By: Sana Krasikov
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The Ground Beneath Her Feet
- By: Salman Rushdie
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 27 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Salman Rushdie is widely considered one of a handful of truly great living writers. The internationally acclaimed, Booker Prize-winning author's storytelling shines in this epic love story, a modern retelling of the myth of Orpheus.
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Okay, Salmon, We get that you're a genious already
- By Julie A Quinn on 04-23-09
By: Salman Rushdie
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Mata Hari's Last Dance
- A Novel
- By: Michelle Moran
- Narrated by: Zara Ramm
- Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Paris, 1917. The notorious dancer Mata Hari sits in a cold cell awaiting freedom...or death. Alone and despondent, she is as confused as the rest of the world about the charges she's been arrested on: treason leading to the deaths of thousands of French soldiers. As she waits for her fate to be decided, she relays the story of her life to a reporter who is allowed to visit her in prison.
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Throughly enjoyable
- By scalante on 09-07-16
By: Michelle Moran
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Welcome to the Monkey House
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: David Strathairn, Maria Tucci, Bill Irwin, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
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Welcome to the Monkey House is a collection of Kurt Vonnegut's shorter works. Originally printed in publications as diverse as The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and The Atlantic Monthly, what these superb stories share is Vonnegut's audacious sense of humor and extraordinary range of creative vision.
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Classic Vonnegut
- By Michael Carrato on 08-17-06
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Sunny's Nights
- Lost and Found at the Bar at the End of the World
- By: Tim Sultan
- Narrated by: Robert Malloch
- Length: 8 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine that Alice had walked into a bar instead of falling down the rabbit hole. In the tradition of J. R. Moehringer’s The Tender Bar and the classic reportage of Joseph Mitchell, here is an indelible portrait of what is quite possibly the greatest bar in the world—and the mercurial, magnificent man behind it. The first time he saw Sunny’s Bar, in 1995, Tim Sultan was lost, thirsty for a drink, and intrigued by the single bar sign among the forlorn warehouses lining the Brooklyn waterfront.
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Visiting an Era
- By Carolyn on 03-01-16
By: Tim Sultan
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The Day Lincoln Was Shot
- By: Jim Bishop
- Narrated by: Nelson Runger
- Length: 11 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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In a historical classic as enthralling as a novel, author Jim Bishop colorfully depicts the city of Washington as it is celebrating the end of the Civil War. With research carefully gathered over 25 years, he weaves details together so skillfully, that even though you know the outcome, the suspense heightens with each unfolding event. It’s Good Friday, April 14, 1865. While all around him, people demand vengeance on the subdued southern states, the President plans to rebuild demolished cities and send captured Secessionist soldiers home to plant their crops.
By: Jim Bishop
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The Spy Wore Red
- By: Aline, Countess of Romanones
- Narrated by: Grace Conlin
- Length: 10 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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When Aline Griffith was born in Pearl River, New York, in 1923, one might have guessed from her exceptional beauty that a career as an actress or model might be in her future. Few would have imagined that twenty-one years later, she would find herself in Spain as a deep-cover OSS agent, infiltrating the highest levels of Spanish society, or that five years later still, she would marry a Spanish grandee and become one of the most watched, most admired, most fascinating women of international society. This is the story of Aline, Countess of Romanones, a story of courage, beauty and success that is far more exciting than any fictionalized thriller.
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A must read!!
- By KaY.2012 on 12-29-14
By: Aline, and others
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Daring
- My Passages - A Memoir
- By: Gail Sheehy
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 14 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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Candid, insightful, and powerful, Daring: My Passages is the story of the unconventional life of a writer who dared - to walk New York City streets with hookers and pimps to expose violent prostitution; to march with civil rights protesters in Northern Ireland as British paratroopers opened fire; to seek out Egypt's president Anwar Sadat when he was targeted for death after making peace with Israel.
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Enjoyed unexpectedly
- By Corinne O'Rourke on 09-06-23
By: Gail Sheehy
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The Night Ocean
- By: Paul La Farge
- Narrated by: Elisabeth Rodgers
- Length: 13 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Marina Willett, MD, has a problem. Her husband, Charlie, has become obsessed with H. P. Lovecraft, in particular with one episode in the legendary horror writer's life: In the summer of 1934, the "old gent" lived for two months with a gay teenage fan named Robert Barlow, at Barlow's family home in central Florida. What were the two of them up to? Were they friends - or something more? Just when Charlie thinks he's solved the puzzle, a new scandal erupts, and he disappears.
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Frustratingly Uneven Due to Clumsy Plot Structure
- By Adam on 06-15-17
By: Paul La Farge
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Black No More
- By: George S. Schuyler
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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According to Max Disher, an ambitious young black man in 1930s New York, someone of his race has only three alternatives: "Get out, get white, or get along." Incapable of getting out and unhappy with getting along, Max leaps at the remaining possibility. Thanks to a certain Dr. Junius Crookman and his mysterious process, Max and other eager clients develop bleached skin that permits them to enter previously forbidden territory. What they discover in white society, however, gives them second thoughts.
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outrageous!
- By Jennifer on 07-31-18
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Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.
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Not good at all
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It’s tough to be a buffoon when the Age of Reason is trying to downsize your job. When the King’s Fool dies unexpectedly, a professional buffoon tries to move up the ranks and grab the top slot. But the politics involved in becoming a court jester are no laughing matter. The rules of becoming the top fool are simple: The winner is the one who performs the most outrageous act. Our buffoon and his fellows struggle for supremacy in a profession that is heading for extinction.
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A great listening experience!
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Leslie Marmon Silko's sublime Ceremony is almost universally considered one of the finest novels ever written by an American Indian. It is the poetic, dreamlike tale of Tayo, a mixed-blood Laguna Pueblo and veteran of World War II. Tormented by shell shock and haunted by memories of his cousin who died in the war, Tayo struggles on his impoverished reservation. After turning to alcohol to ease his pain, he strives for a better understanding of who he is.
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Worth a re-read
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Blade Runner
- Originally published as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
- By: Philip K. Dick
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 9 hrs and 12 mins
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It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the hordes of humans out there lurked several rogue androids. Deckard's assignment: find them and then..."retire" them. Trouble was, the androids all looked exactly like humans, and they didn't want to be found!
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This is the original Do Androids Dream of Electric
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CYBEX burned into my eyes
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By: Don DeLillo
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He’s one of America’s most brilliant neuroscientists. He’s also Black and dying of cancer. But he has a plan—a brain transfer. He’ll put his gifted mind into the body of Sammy Sturgeon, a White high school football star who was on the rise until a touchdown collision left him brain-dead. He convinces his co-conspirator, Dr. Dino Battaglia, to help him with the forbidden procedure. Douglass wakes up in Sammy’s White, athletic body, with his new family and legions of fans weeping at his miraculous recovery.
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What listeners say about Mumbo Jumbo
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Tom
- 03-01-20
Interesting for Political & Cultural Influence
Interesting Period Piece, told in the “Negro” Slang of the 1920’s, notable in the fact that it was written by a MacArthur Genius Grant Recipient, Pulitzer and National Book Award Nominee and Black Activist Poet and Essayist.
Mumbo Jumbo is a wild fever dream that spans countries, movements and centuries declaiming the attempts by the Powers That Be to suppress the Real Black Culture of music and dance and transform Blacks to docile slaves of the dominant White Culture.
It drops the names and events of the time combining them all with Ancient African myths and traditions to warn African-Americans of the threat to their essence. For those readers unfamiliar with all the references the book is better skimmed for its tone and rhythm since it is difficult to follow. Best appreciated when accompanied by recreational herbs and/or chemicals.
While Harold Bloom included Mumbo Jumbo in his Western Canon of 500 Books, I’m pretty sure that was a gesture of respect for the Author’s Cause rather than for its literary merit. Three Stars.
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13 people found this helpful
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- Anonymous User
- 12-15-22
Unique and enjoyable 👍🏽
Excellent book excellent narrator would have given fives all the way around except for the very long prologue did not enjoy the first 26 or 30 minutes of the book
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- Margaret
- 12-01-22
Important but difficult
I’m sure that this is a very important book. And at times it’s very entertaining. I would have needed a reading guide though to get the full value.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 12-20-23
The mingling of historical facts in mumbo-jumbo.
This book is absolutely enjoyable, entertaining and a must read for those who are students of history.
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- cyberdaniel4
- 06-26-23
The Spirit of the blues!
Awesome sauce! Seriously, you don’t have to take this seriously to get a whole lot out of it. It with a creative fabric through the history of musical dance in his country. Somuch parody and so much of Reed telling his truth.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Jimmyjoejangles
- 03-16-23
Phenomenal!
Really interesting story interwoven in with historical fact! All the things I looked up , (picasso and penal colony among them) ended up being true! I did not know that America was used as a penal colony, but a quarter of the population at Revolution was convicts!
Eye opening stuff!! Can't wait for a second listen of it!
Will definitely read more from this author!
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- Nicola Cataldo
- 06-06-22
Reed is a genius
Ismael Reed is one of our most important voiced but this story is just a little esoteric for relaxed listening. That's my limitation not his. Performance was perfect.
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8 people found this helpful
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- Mitzi Jackson
- 06-02-21
Great Selection!!!!
The language and the style of this book was really amazing and I think it was narrated very well truly truly enjoyable thank you.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Papa O
- 02-24-20
my favorite book
this is one of my all-time favorite allegory, straightforwardness comprised in this novel is one of a kind
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3 people found this helpful
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- BBWrighter
- 01-18-24
I just didn’t get it
Maybe I’m too old, too white, too unimaginative but I didn’t get it. I was more interested in the narrators “Christopher Walkers pause during a sentence” way of talking to pay close enough attention. But I just didn’t get it.
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