Invisible Man
First edition
|
|
| Author | Ralph Ellison |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre | bildungsroman, African-American literature, social commentary |
| Publisher | Random House |
|
Publication date
|
1952 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 581 pp (second edition) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 30780333 |
| 813/.54 20 | |
| LC Class | PS3555.L625 I5 1994 |
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison about an African American man whose color renders him invisible, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues facing African-Americans early in the twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T. Washington, as well as issues of individuality and personal identity.
Invisible Man won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked Invisible Man nineteenth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.Time magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century," rather than a "race novel, or even a bildungsroman."Malcolm Bradbury and Richard Ruland recognize an existential vision with a "Kafka-like absurdity". According to The New York Times, U.S. president Barack Obama modeled his memoir Dreams from My Father on Ellison's novel.
Ellison says in his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition that he started to write what would eventually become Invisible Man in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine. The letters he wrote to fellow novelist Richard Wright as he started working on the novel provide evidence for its political context: the disillusion with the Communist Party that he and Wright shared. In a letter to Wright August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger toward party leaders for betraying African American and Marxist class politics during the war years. "If they want to play ball with the bourgeoisie they needn't think they can get away with it.... Maybe we can't smash the atom, but we can, with a few well chosen, well written words, smash all that crummy filth to hell." In the wake of this disillusion, Ellison began writing Invisible Man, a novel that was, in part, his response to the party's betrayal.
...
Wikipedia