Oreo (Littérature étrangère) (French Edition)

Fran Ross (1935–1985) grew up in Philadelphia. She wrote Oreo while working as a proofreader and journalist, and then moved to Los Angeles to write for Richard Pryor.

Danzy Senna is the author of several books, including the award-winning novel Caucasia.

Harryette Mullen, a professor of English at UCLA, is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently Recyclopedia, which won a PEN Beyond Margins Award

“A brilliant and biting satire, a feminist picaresque, absurd, unsettling, and hilarious ... Ross' novel, with its Joycean language games and keen social critique, is as playful as it is profound. Criminally overlooked. A knockout.”
- Kirkus (Starred Review)

“Setting out from her black household in Philadelphia to find her deadbeat Jewish father in New York, [Oreo] proceeds through one of the funniest journeys ever, amid a whirlwind of wisecracks in a churning mix of Yiddish, black vernacular, and every sort of English.”
- Danielle Dutton, The Guardian

“What a rollicking little masterpiece this book is, truly one of the most delightful, hilarious, intelligent novels I’ve stumbled across in recent years, a wholly original work written in a wonderful mashed-up language that mixes high academic prose, black slang and Yiddish to great effect. I must have laughed out loud a hundred times, and it’s a short book, just over 200 pages, which averages out to one booming gut-laugh every other page.”
- Paul Auster, The New York Times

“Oreo is one of the funniest books I've ever read. To convey Oreo's humor effectively, I would have to use the comedic graphs, menus, and quizzes Ross uses in the novel. So instead, I just settle for, 'You have to read this.'”
- Mat Johnson, NPR Books

“With its mix of vernacular dialects, bilingual and ethnic humor, inside jokes, neologisms, verbal quirks, and linguistic oddities, Ross's novel dazzles...”
- Harryette Mullen

“It took me two years to "feel" Wu Tang's first album, even longer to appreciate Basquiat, and I still don't get all the fuss over Duke Ellington and Frank Lloyd Wright. But I couldn't believe Oreo hadn't been on my cultural radar.”
- Paul Beatty, The New York Times

“Hilarious, touching and a future classic.”
- Vanity Fair

“Think: Thomas Pynchon meets Don Quixote, mixed with a crack joke crafter. I'm not sure I've ever admired a book's inventiveness and soul more.”
- John Warner, Chicago Tribune

“The novel will endure, greeting each new generation of readers with its continuing relevance.”
- Amanda Sarasien, The Literary Review

“Hilariously offbeat. ”
- Essence Magazine

“This is a novel that refuses to be categorized or tamed in any way.”
- Bookforum

“Oreo has snap and whimsy to burn. It’s a nonstop outbound flight to a certain kind of readerly bliss. It may have been first published more than 40 years ago, but its time is now.”
- Dwight Garner, The New York Times

“Uproariously funny...criminally neglected.”
- Stephen Sparks, LitHub

“This novel has wings.”
- Dwight Garner, The New York Times