About The Book
“Quiet, powerful . . . brilliant, deeply moving . . . [Sherman Alexie] is funny, he is perceptive, and he knows how to stir us in large and small ways. The talent is real, and it is very large.” –Frederick Busch, The New York Times Book Review
Sherman Alexie has been hailed as “one of the best writers we have” (The Nation). Reservation Blues is his “irresistibly stunning debut novel” (San Francisco Chronicle). One day legendary bluesman Robert Johnson appears on the Spokane Indian reservation, in flight from the devil and presumed long dead. When he passes his enchanted instrument to Thomas-Builds-the-Fire–storyteller, misfit, and musician–a magical odyssey begins that will take them from reservation bars to small-town taverns, from the cement trails of Seattle to the concrete canyons of Manhattan. This is a fresh, luxuriantly comic tale of power, tragedy, and redemption among contemporary Native Americans.
Praise
“The mystical complexity of Reservation Blues is as mesmerizing as the poetic power of Alexie’s writing. Alexie makes his story credible while playing fast and loose with the conventions of time. . . . Generously laced with bleak and sometimes wacky humor, but none of that detracts from the book’s poignant theme.” –San Francisco Chronicle
‘scathingly funny . . . Reservation Blues never misses a beat, never sounds a false note.” –Los Angeles Times
“An important voice in American literature.” –The Boston Globe
“Quiet, powerful”brilliant, deeply moving”[Sherman Alexie] is funny, he is perceptive, and he knows how to stir us in large and small ways.” –Frederick Busch, The New York Times Book Review
Awards
Winner of the American Book Award
Winner of the Murray Morgan Prize