Flight to Canada: A Novel

Ishmael Reed’s classic, sharp and characteristically funny story of the Civil War.

Three slaves infected with Dysaethesia Aethipica (a term coined in the nineteenth century for the disease that makes Negroes run away) escape from Virginia. Not satisfied with leaving slavery halfway, one of the trio has vowed to go the whole distance to Canada; his master, Arthur Swille, determined to recover his property, pursues, hot on Raven Quickskill’s trail.

With myth-bending ingenuity, Reed merges his...