First published in 1952, Invisible Man revealed the pain of a black man's existence in a white world. It was shocking then, but remains important literature today. It is the story of a young man's journey--through the Deep South to the streets of Harlem, through events and experiences that range from tortured to macabre. As he moves through time, he learns about the black world, the white world, and a world of his own. His passage is a frightening but at the same time enlightening pilgrimage, for the Invisible Man and for all of us.


From Publishers Weekly
These three volumes have been redesigned and reissued to commemorate the first anniversary of Ellison's death. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.


The New York Times Book Review, Wright Morris
Invisible Man belongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its source.


Book Description
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.

After a brief prologue, the story begins with a terrifying experience of the hero's high school days, moves quickly to the campus of a Southern Negro college and then to New York's Harlem, where most of the action takes place. The many people that the hero meets in the course of his wanderings are remarkably various, complex and significant. With them he becomes involved in an amazing series of adventures, in which he is sometimes befriended but more often deceived and betrayed--as much by himself and his own illusions as by the duplicity of the blindness of others.

Invisible Man is not only a great triumph of storytelling and characterization; it is a profound and uncompromising interpretation of the Negro's anomalous position in American society.


From the Inside Flap
Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.

After a brief prologue, the story begins with a terrifying experience of the hero's high school days, moves quickly to the campus of a Southern Negro college and then to New York's Harlem, where most of the action takes place. The many people that the hero meets in the course of his wanderings are remarkably various, complex and significant. With them he becomes involved in an amazing series of adventures, in which he is sometimes befriended but more often deceived and betrayed--as much by himself and his own illusions as by the duplicity of the blindness of others.

Invisible Man is not only a great triumph of storytelling and characterization; it is a profound and uncompromising interpretation of the Negro's anomalous position in American society.

ANNOTATION

Ellison won the National Book Award for this searing story of a black man's fervent quest for personal identity and social visibility that takes him on a journey through the Southern U.S. and later to New York City.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Sacred Fire

Invisible Man — incredibly, Ralph Ellison's first and only novel — is one of the lasting masterpieces of American literature. It chronicles the existential journey of an unnamed black man attempting to discover his identity and role in a hostile and confusing world that refuses to acknowledge his existence. Within the story of the protagonist's quest for definition, Ellison offers a vivid and unforgiving examination of the shortcomings of the self-serving black bourgeoisie, clumsy white philanthropists, dehumanizing American industry, and unrealistic revolutionary movements. The narrator jointly tells his own, personal coming-of-age story — one that takes him from the deep South to the streets of Harlem, from workaday jobs to revolution, from a black college to (literally) a hole in the ground — and the symbolic story of the unfinished coming of age of his race in America. Ellison skillfully manages to tell both stories without ever reducing his narrator to a fiat symbol of everyblackman, allowing the story to work successfully on both levels.

The novel also benefits from Ellison's rich narrative style, which drew from a heady mix of influences. He incorporated the jazzy rhythms and vivid imagery of black American speech, music, and folklore in his tale, while also showing the influence of white writers such as Melville, Twain, and Dostoyevsky.

Invisible Man is an essential book, whether read as an intriguing coming-of-age story, an incisive portrait of an individual's quest for identity, or a powerful indictment of the absurdity of racism that remains fresh and relevant today. Ellison's stylish prose speaks to the individual and collective need to acquire self-knowledge, self-definition, self-illumination—to become visible to ourselves.

Atlantic Monthly

Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity — powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto.

School Library Journal

Gr 11 Up-Ralph Ellison's 1952 novel tells truths about the nature of bigotry and its effect on the minds of victims and perpetrators. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Atlantic Monthly

Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity — powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto.

Wright Morris - Books of the Century, New York Times review, April 1952

...With this book the author maps a course from the underground world into the light. Invisible Manbelongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its source.

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, a work often cited as the American novel of its time.
(William Corbett, Author of New York Literary Lights) — William Corbett