Invisible Man

Both a deeply compelling bestselling novel and an epic milestone of American literature.

Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then-unknown author, 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 book's nameless narrator 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, before 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, James Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

Reason: Banned, Obscene language and sexual content

Author: Ralph Ellison
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03/14/1995
Pages: 608
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.25w x 1.00d
ISBN: 9780679732761

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 7.2
Point Value: 30
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 19790 / Invisible Man

About the Author
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma and trained as a musician at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1936, at which time a visit to New York and a meeting with Richard Wright led to his first attempts at fiction. Invisible Man won the National Book Award and the Russwurm Award. Appointed to the Academy of American Arts and Letters in 1964, Ellison taught at many colleges including Bard College, the University of Chicago, and New York University where he was Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities from 1970 through 1980. Ralph Ellison died in 1994.