Adam Mansbach’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times Book Review, and Esquire, and on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. He lives in Berkeley, California.
"Mansbach has clearly had a play date with Michael Chabon and Junot
Diaz, and his fresh, witty novel is one that hip readers will
relish . . . Laced with zaniness and cultural bling."
—Ron Charles, Washington Post
“A rollicking, frenetic and hilarious jaunt through the (literal
and figurative) New York City underworld . . . [that] does for
graffiti what Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier &
Clay did for comic books . . . [Rage is Back] mashes up disparate
linguistic registers with an effortlessness that brings to mind
Junot Diaz’s perennial narrator, Junior . . . Beneath all the weed
and spray paint, it’s a warmhearted story about a son searching for
his father and for himself, a trip through the past and present of
an American art form.”
—David Lukas, San Francisco Chronicle
“Mansbach’s wild ride will likely earn cult-classic status — and
deservedly so . . . In Dondi, Mansbach has created an unforgettable
narrator who combines elements of Holden Caulfield, Oscar Wao, and
even a hint of Ignatius J. Reilly.”
—Eric Liebetrau, Boston Globe
“Flashing bits of brilliance like a beautifully burned train . . .
Mansbach can write with real talent, maybe crazy talent.”
—Kevin Baker, The New York Times Book Review
“A hilarious revenge thriller. . . [that reads] something like
watching a Quentin Tarantino film or listening to a Wu-Tang Clan
album—perhaps simultaneously. This is a great thing. … Rage Is Back
has humor and horror and humanity and is altogether fresh.”
—Kevin Coval, Chicago Tribune
“Exuberant . . . Mansbach’s paean to graffiti art . . . has a
wild-style collage form that also ties in plot points involving a
hallucinogenic vision-quest, the so-called ‘mole people’ said to
live in the city’s tunnels, and time travel.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“A muscular ode to New York City’s 1980s art underground . . .
Combines a poet's touch with the wild sparks of a subway train
speeding through a graffiti-splashed tunnel.”
—Elle Magazine
"Rage Is Back is a funny, macho-but-vulnerable
coming-of-age-story. It’s seeped in New York nostalgia and narrated
in bright and vulgar prose that succeeds in hinting at no small
quantity of swagger and soul. As Dondi says, ‘it’s not easy to talk
from your heart and out your ass at the same time.’
Delightfully, Rage Is Back manages to do both."
—Daily Beast
“A bracingly funny book [that] rekindles the golden age of
graffiti.”
—Connie Ogle, Miami Herald
"A cacophonous love letter to the old dirty, pre-gentrified New
York."
—New York Post
“A fierce and funny thrill ride through the train yards and back
streets of the graffiti underground. Mansbach writes with splendid
rhythm and intensity.”
—San Jose Mercury News
“A wild and enjoyable ride.”
—Nicholas Mancusi, Newsday
“A rambunctious ride through graffiti culture, filled with magical
moments and outlandish situations . . . Like Tarantino, Mansbach
has an ear for hip-hop.”
—Charles Ealy, Austin American-Statesman
“It’s the great American graffiti novel. The golden era of New York
hip-hop and graffiti lives—on the shelves of bookstores.”
—Brooklyn Paper
“Two years after a joke propelled him to the bestseller list, the
Berkeley author proves he belongs there with his excellent new
"Great American Graffiti Novel". Rage uses graffiti as less a
setting than a central character in and of itself: Mansbach loves
the form too deeply to grant it anything less, loves it so much his
writing reads like graffiti looks — big, colorful, dense, often
profane, occasionally impenetrable. But, like any great (or Great)
novel — like Sleep, even — Rage is also vastly bigger and deeper
and more valuable than the sum of its (many, moving) parts: not
quite easy, but not quite meant to be.”
—East Bay Express
“With its hyper-verbal view into the hip-hop culture near to the
author's heart, Rage Is Back is masterfully verbose.”
—Boston Phoenix
“It makes sense that Mansbach would write a novel that intertwines
graffiti artists with a story about family. It makes sense because
hip-hop culture, race, and family are three of the overarching
themes in all of his work. What is evident as soon as you start
reading Rage Is Back is that Mansbach is one of the few writers
capable of taking those subjects and writing something that comes
off as organic and fun to read. Like Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude,
Mansbach’s latest has bright flourishes of urban magical realism.
And also like Lethem’s book, you can clearly hear the characters’
voices as you read through Rage Is Back…. you find yourself
finishing the book and realizing Rage Is Back is totally not what
you expected, and that’s one of the things that make the book so
wonderful to read.”
—Flavorwire
“Gels in a most satisfying way as fractured relationships are
mended and old friends hatch — and splendidly execute — a plan to
exact careful revenge on the man who long ago split them apart.
Read it on the B train.”
—Daily Candy
“Unfolding like a fever dream of an impossible return to
graffiti-era New York, Mansbach’s Rage Is Back delivers a
mind-bending journey through a subterranean world of epic heroes
and villains, and is already being called “the great American
graffiti novel.” A must-read for the literate hip-hop
head.”
—OkayPlayer
“Through gripping prose, Adam Mansbach puts the reader in the thick
of the graffiti underground.”
—AM New York
Praise for Go The F**k To Sleep:
“Total genius.”
—Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn, father of two
“A children’s book for grown-ups! I really did laugh out
loud—hilarious!”
—David Byrne, musician, father of one
Praise for The End of the Jews:
“A beautiful, funny, heartbreaking book that manages to take on
art, love, identity, class anxiety, being Jewish, and wishing you
were black. Very few writers could have attempted all this without
farcical results. Adam Mansbach succeeds, brilliantly. The End of
the Jews is an intense, painful, poignant book.”
-The Boston Globe
“Smart and cynical.”
-The New York Times
“Mansbach has made something new of the multigenerational Jewish
epic; this is far more tough-minded reading than we are used to on
the subject. I don’t love Jews any less for it, and neither does
Mansbach, but I do know us better for what we are. This is a
heartfelt, truthful book.”
—Keith Gessen, author of All the Sad Young Literary Men
Praise for Angry Black White Boy:
"The book's careening parable feels like a more multiculturally
aware equivalent to the literary provocations of older cult author
Chuck Palahniuk, with its wild plot hooks, credibly eccentric
characters and trenchant apocalyptic comedy.... ingenious
street-dance-slash-mime stylized movement [and] occasional recorded
snippets mesh with the cast's rapping, human beatboxing, singing
and keyboarding -- all cleverly driving the narrative forward
rather than overpowering it."
—Variety
“Startling, subversive, and raucous, Angry Black White Boy is a
novel about how we became who we are, and why that’s not good
enough.”
—Daniel Alarcón, author of War by Candlelight
“With this brutal, hilarious, and tragic novel, Adam Mansbach
proves once again he is one of the most ambitious, insightful, and
daring writers of our generation.”
—Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the
Hip-Hop Generation
“Angry Black White Boy is full of hilariously twisted racial
politics. Adam Mansbach is like a wigger Ishmael Reed running wild
through the world of hip hop.”
—Touré, author of Soul City
“An insanely smart novel that pulls no punches . . . wild, comic,
and dark.” —Percival Everett, author of Erasure
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