Mat Johnson’s Hunting in Harlem (Bloomsbury), might seem like a dark, twisted, tongue-in-cheek look at gentrification in Harlem. But for the Mt. Airy resident and Rutgers-Camden professor, the novel isn’t only about New York’s historically black neighborhood -- it’s about the changing nature of Philadelphia’s neighborhoods as well.

"I lived in Harlem while it was changing dramatically," says Johnson, 32. "But really, the gentrification thing for me is about Germantown and Northern Liberties. It's about growing up and seeing neighborhoods trying to change -- and in Germantown's case, never really changing. It's always been in this odd state where it doesn't know which direction it wants to go in, toward gentrification or not."

Hunting offers a dystopian view of a Harlem on the verge of another renaissance. A community development corporation named Horizon Realty is fixing up brownstones and making the streets secure for an influx of buppies. They've even recruited three ex-cons for the Second Chance program, a management training program that will prepare them for successful careers as Horizon real estate managers. Horizon's plans don't stop there, though: In the novel's most disturbing twist, rapists, drug dealers, child abusers and various other no-accounts are simply murdered in the name of gentrification.

"I hope people read it and get a little offended at the idea. I'm still ambivalent about it -- I still don't know," says Johnson. "In Harlem, I used to come home at three in the morning, and be very careful walking home. And I realized, the difference between a good block and a bad block was just a couple people. My tenement building in Harlem was a bad building -- but it was only a bad building because of three or four apartments out of 20. I played with that idea, took it a little further. What I ended up with was something sort of creepy and morally questionable."

Certainly, Hunting in Harlem addresses the profound ethical issues associated with gentrification. But Johnson shines most when addressing the absurdities of African-American social culture today. His characters are glorious caricatures of recognizable types: The charismatic head of Horizon Realty, former Congressman Lester Baines, is eerily reminiscent of Kenneth Gamble, the music mogul who's currently redeveloping the area south of South Street. Martin Amis' The Information inspired Johnson to create Bobby Finley, a "whining, complaining, under-read writer" who self-publishes an execrable tome that becomes a must-read after a killer publicity stunt. In lampooning this mania for fiction by a black writer -- a mania based on skin color and publicity, not artistic merit -- Johnson skewers the self-publishing success stories of schlocky commercial fiction writers like Omar Tyree. His accuracy, and his insider's eye for detail, are wicked fun.

The narrow view that the black community must show a united front to outsiders, that criticism from the inside is counterproductive, prevents both sides from seeing the subtle interplay of class factors within the community. Harlem is the perfect setting for Johnson's drama, since its geography has always been a metaphor for race and class struggles: Strivers' Row, between West 138th and West 139th streets and Seventh and Eighth avenues, was the must-have address for mulatto socialites from the 1920s through the 1940s. Life on Sugar Hill, which slopes from West 145th to West 155th Street, was supposedly sweeter, hence its name. According to The Color Complex: The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans, "In the 1920s light-skinned blacks with money, talent, social prominence and intellectual distinction migrated to the high-rent white stone apartment houses of the Hill." Only in Harlem could the politics of skin color have a physical address.

And perhaps only now, in the wake of other groundbreaking young black literary fiction writers like Colson Whitehead and Touré, or after the success of Stephen Carter's The Emperor of Ocean Park (the first major mainstream novel since the Harlem Renaissance set among the black bourgeoisie), could we have a writer like Mat Johnson, whose satirical, loving, conflicted fiction consistently makes burgers out of sacred cows.

Mat Johnson reads Fri., May 9, 7 p.m., Robin’s Bookstore, 108 S. 13th St., 215-735-9600 and Thu., June 5, 7 p.m., Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341; both are free.