Johnson has been granted two of the most prestigious awards available to a fiction-writer in the United States. In 1990 he received the National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage. In 1998, he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, commonly known as the "genius grant," a gift of over $300,000 to exceptional individuals for their contribution to society and culture.

Johnson's four published novels, as well as his two collections of short stories, have consistently received critical acclaim. Critics praise Johnson for his original use of literary form. They note that he uses traditional narrative forms, such as oral history, the slave narrative, the sea tale, and the fable, in original, transformative works of fiction.

Critics often praise Johnson for representing African-American history and the African-American experience from a variety of religious and philosophical perspectives. Johnson combines Western intellectual traditions of both Christian thought and modern philosophy with Eastern...