Martin Luther King Jr is a political visionary, human rights activist, preacher, scholar and martyr.
Chaym Smith is his dark mirror, a violent, cynical criminal with a mind and talent to mimic King's. When Smith begins to act as King's double at rallies, the contradictions and strange similarities between the two men set one question into sharp focus - is evil inherent or a product of circumstance?

Dreamer is a multi-layered masterpiece, capturing Civil Rights-era America in a snapshot of racism and brutality, revolution and hope.

"Like a skiff exploring history's more hidden currents, Johnson's poetic language drifts with care over the moiling currents of King's intellect, leaving in its wake a wonderful, prismatic novel, exhorting and testifying, but never preaching" - * Guardian *

"Dreamer is not content merely to explore inequality and its pesky moral dilemmas; it goes farther, to hold up a mirror in which the interrelatedness of these apparent opposites can be viewed . . . a lively tale that leaves the reader with enormous concerns to contemplate . . . It's a joy to read fiction in which there is a cultivated vision at work" - * New York Times *

"What unites Dreamer's diverse concerns - biography, politics, sociology, ethics - is its passionate desire to celebrate black history and to vindicate King - it is powerful as a moral tribute" - * Sunday Times *

"His fiction transcends the immediate concerns of race and colour, and will find its place in the great body of literature produced by America's humanitarian tradition" - * Literary Review *

"Superbly told, fictionalised history is rarely so good" - * The Times *

"Johnson is a superb craftsman . . . It is a measure of the rich profundity of Dreamer that its title could refer to any number of people: King himself, the narrator, the writer. As I closed the book, I rather hoped it referred to the reader" - * Sunday Telegraph *

"Elegant, erudite and fearless" - * Time Out *