The Terrible Twos » (1ST DALKEY)

The Terrible Twos is a wickedly funny, sharp-edged fictional assault on all those sulky, spoiled naysayers needing instant gratification--Americans. Ishmael Reed's sixth novel depicts a zany, bizarre, and all-too-believable future where mankind's fate depends upon a jolly old gent named St. Nicholas and a Risto-rasta dwarf named Black Peter, who together wreak mischievous havoc on Wall Street and in the Oval Office. This offbeat, on-target social critique makes marvelous fun of everything that is American, from commercialism to Congress, Santa Claus to religious cults.

Saturday Review

"A Christmas Carol, Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and Robert Coover's The Public Burning--all hover as influences over this latest production by Ishmael Reed, the novelist and poet who has been called the best black writer in America today. Reed's mastery of crosscutting techniques and his extravagant inventiveness keep the madness on the boil and help disguise this novel's essential commitment to savage social criticism. . . . In its (many) finer moments, this is matchless comic invective. Ishmael Reed is a one-of-a-kind writer."
Bruce Allen, Saturday Review, 6/82