Skip content
Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch
The Minister Primarily by John Oliver Killens
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account
Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of African American Literature Book Club with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and African American Literature Book Club is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting

The Minister Primarily

A Novel

$40.94

Get for $14.99 with membership
Narrator Nyambi Nyambi
Length 17 hours 19 minutes
Language English
  Send as gift   Add to Wish List

Almost ready!

In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.

      Log in       Create account

A major literary event—the eagerly anticipated publication of a long-lost novel from legendary writer and three-time Pulitzer Prize nominee John Oliver Killens, hailed as the founding father of the Black Arts Movement and mentor to celebrated writers, including Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, Arthur Flowers, and Terry McMillan.

Wanderlust has taken Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson on numerous adventures, from Mississippi to Washington D.C., Vietnam, London and eventually to Africa, to the fictitious Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya, where the young musician hopes to “find himself.”

But this small sliver of a country in West Africa, recently freed from British colonial rule, is thrown into turmoil with the discovery of cobanium—a radioactive mineral 500 times more powerful than uranium, making it irresistible for greedy speculators, grifters, and charlatans. Overnight, outsiders descend upon the sleepy capital city looking for “a piece of the action.”

When a plot to assassinate Guanaya’s leader is discovered, Jimmy Jay—a dead ringer for the Prime Minister—is enlisted in a counter scheme to foil the would-be coup. He will travel to America with half of Guanaya’s cabinet ministers to meet with the President of the United States and address the UN General Assembly, while the rest of the cabinet will remain in Guanaya with the real Prime Minister.

What could go wrong?

 Everything.

Set in the 1980s, this smart, funny, dazzlingly brilliant novel is a literary delight—and the final gift from an American literary legend.

A novelist, teacher, mentor, screenwriter, essayist, and activist, John Oliver Killens (1916–1987) is one of the most important figures in African American literary culture, considered one of the founding fathers of the Black Arts Movement. Three of his novels, Youngblood; And Then We Heard the Thunder; and The Cotillion, or One Good Bull Is Half the Herd, were nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His students included Tina McElroy Ansa, Bebe Moore Campbell, Arthur Flowers, Nikki Giovanni, Elizabeth Nunez, Terry McMillan, and scores of others. In conjunction with his teaching appointments—the New School for Social Research, Fisk University, Columbia University, Howard University, Bronx Community College, and Medgar Evers College—Killens created and directed a series of writers conferences between 1965 and 1986 that served as milestones in African American literary history.

Libro.fm app

Get a free audiobook when you make the switch!

When you start a new membership in support of African American Literature Book Club with the promo code SWITCH, you’ll get a bonus audiobook credit at sign-up.

Make the switch

Gift audiobook credit bundles

You pick the number of credits, your recipient picks the audiobooks, and African American Literature Book Club is supported by your purchase.

Start gifting
book-open-1

Want the printed book?

Get the print edition from African American Literature Book Club.

Get the print edition

Powered by Bookstore Link

Get a free audiobook AND support bookstores Make the switch

African American Literature Book Club is proud to partner with Libro.fm to give you a great audiobook experience.