SOURCE: Nazareth, Peter. Review of Japanese by Spring, by Ishmael Reed. World Literature Today 67, no. 3 (summer 1993): 610.

In the following review of Japanese by Spring, Nazareth praises Reed's humorous satire and the topicality of his subject matter.

With his ninth novel, Ishmael Reed proves again that he is not afraid to plunge into the maelstrom. Japanese by Spring is full of contemporary issues plaguing the American consciousness: Rodney King, Anita Hill/Clarence Thomas, the U.S. attack on Iraq, and so on. As he moves through his fifties, has Reed lost his fictional abilities? No. For Reed, the novel is supreme. If you want to understand anything, put it into a novel and let the novel decide. And so Reed himself is also a character in the work: “He sometimes went around with a tacky beard in order to appear to be a man of the people. He sometimes...