Invisible Man

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER - NATIONAL BESTSELLER - In this deeply compelling novel and epic milestone of American literature, a nameless narrator tells his story from the basement lair of the Invisible Man he imagines himself to be.

He 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.

Originally published in 1952 as the first novel by a then unknown author, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century. 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.

Publisher: Vintage
Published: 03/14/1995
Pages: 608
Weight: 1lbs
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


Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 02/20/1995
New Yorker (The) 02/09/2009 pg. 108
Entertainment Weekly 03/01/2013 pg. 68
Entertainment Weekly 07/05/2013 pg. 97

About the Author
Ralph Ellison was born in Okalahoma 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.