Books by Ralph Ellison

'One of the most important American novels of the twentieth century' The Times'It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves'Ralph Ellison's blistering and impassioned first novel tells the extraordinary story of a man invisible 'simply because people refuse to see me'. Published in 1952 when American society was in the cusp of immense change, the powerfully depicted adventures of Ellison's invisible man - from his expulsion from a Southern college to a terrifying Harlem race riot - go far beyond the story of one individual to give voice to the experience of an entire generation of black Americans.This edition includes Ralph Ellison's introduction to the thirtieth anniversary edition of Invisible Man, a fascinating account of the novel's seven-year gestation.With an Introduction by John F. Callahan'Brilliant' Saul Bellow

Published after Ellison's death, this follow-up to Invisible Man is a thunderous epic of memory, faith, loss and identity. 'Words are your business, boy. Not just the Word. Words are everything' 'Tell me what happened while there's still time,' demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate black baptist minister he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young orphan, Sunraider was taken in and raised by Hickman, before reinventing himself as a racist politician. Now, as the two men confront the truth about their shared past in a final reckoning, Ellison's masterly novel takes in memories of a southern childhood, the rhythms of jazz and gospel and the richness of the African-American experience.'Majestic' Toni Morrison

Offering students and scholars a variety of interpretations from which to fashion their own views of the novel and the man who created it, this text takes the position that there can be no last word on "Invisible Man". The essays share a respect for the novel's fluidity and for every reader's encounter with its narrator, story, and meanings.