Invisible Man (Modern Library) (Vintage International)

by Ralph Ellison

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Book cover for Invisible Man

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Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time • Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. The nameless narrator of the novel describes growing up in a black community in the South, attending a Negro college from which he is expelled, moving to New York and becoming the chief spokesman of the Harlem branch of "the Brotherhood," and retreating amid violence and confusion to the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be. The book is a passionate and witty tour de force of style, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.
  • ISBN10 0375407170
  • ISBN13 9780375407178
  • Publish Date 1 June 1999 (first published 25 June 1970)
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 20 May 2017
  • Publish Country US
  • Publisher Random House USA Inc
  • Imprint Random House US Audio
  • Language English