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Invisible Man
- A Novel
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
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Editorial reviews
An idealistic young man strives to make his way among the like-minded of his own Black community and the larger white world beyond only to experience cascading disillusionment in both. He is The Invisible Man, the protagonist of Ralph Ellison’s masterpiece, electrifying today, and devastatingly so when published in 1953. A richly poetic and cinematic work carrying a searing social critique, the novel features a first-person narrative that seems written to be heard as much as read. And the actor reading to us here seems to have been born for the role; as the movie trailers say, Joe Morton is The Invisible Man.
From his nameless and hidden existence in a Manhattan basement, our narrator leads us through the events leading to his identity or lack of one. A high school valedictorian down South, he receives a scholarship from a white group after being brought onstage for a humiliating, bigoted burlesque. Honored at his Black college to chauffeur a visiting white benefactor, he accedes to the request to take a fateful detour through the town’s Black slums. As a result, the college’s president, a venerated yet utterly Machiavellian figure, scapegoats him. Expelled and directed north for redemption and employment, he again becomes the fall guy, literally and figuratively, when he is injured and laid off from his job in a union-embattled New York City factory.
Nursed back to health by the kind, maternal Mary up in Harlem, he seems to find his calling at the unlikely event of an elderly couple’s eviction. Spontaneously addressing the roiling crowd to temper their rage lest it incite the armed white evictors, the injustices he shares with them by race, as well as those befalling him for less obvious reasons, impassion him to eloquently encourage their defiance. His oratory draws him to the attention of Jack, head of ‘the brotherhood’ (Ellison’s stand-in for the Communist movement), who offers him work and successfully indoctrinates him with utopian propaganda and sets him up to lead the party’s Harlem chapter. Seduced by his prestige among the party’s white sophisticates and a long-craved sense of purposefulness he embraces his work, even standing down Ras, an afro-centric nihilist violently competing for followers. Intrigue upon intrigue later, a more sinister threat reveals itself in his dogmatically ruthless brother-mentor plotting to further his cause even at the expense of others’ lives. Racism, our narrator shatteringly learns, is but one form of man’s inhumanity to man. And so, he has hibernated, invisibly, until now, until a stirring in his soul and imagination suggests the possibilities of his own spring.
Propelled largely through its characters’ richly defined verbal personae, the novel is perfectly realized by Joe Morton’s masterful, dramatically distinct vocal embodiments; the protagonist himself is, not surprising, his tour de force. In the end, we experience the sensibility of actor and author as one and the same: a perfect match-up indeed. Elly Schull Meeks
Publisher's summary
Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time
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.
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In 1994, Mike Mignola created one of the most unique and visually arresting comics series to ever see print: Hellboy. Tens of thousands have followed the exploits of the World's Greatest Paranormal Investigator in comics form and in prose. Now, fans of the comic can enjoy the world of Hellboy as seen through the eyes of some of the brightest creative lights in horror and mystery fiction.
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Extra stories for true fans
- By Daniel Wiffen on 07-24-21
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Cane
- By: Jean Toomer
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 6 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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First published in 1923, Jean Toomer's Cane is an innovative literary work powerfully evoking black life in the South. Rich in imagery, Toomer's impressionistic, sometimes surrealistic sketches of Southern rural and urban life are permeated by visions of smoke, sugarcane, dusk, and fire; the northern world is pictured as a harsher reality of asphalt streets.
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When Robots Read, and I'm a Fan of Robots...
- By Jonathan on 03-26-13
By: Jean Toomer
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Midnight Cowboy
- By: James Leo Herlihy
- Narrated by: Michael Urie
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Midnight Cowboy is considered by many to be one of the best American novels published since World War II. The main story centers around Joe Buck, a naive but eager and ambitious young Texan, who decides to leave his dead-end job in search of a grand and glamorous life he believes he will find in New York City. But the city turns out to be a much more difficult place to negotiate than Joe could ever have imagined. He soon finds himself and his dreams compromised. Buck's fall from innocence and his relationship with the crippled street hustler Ratso Rizzo form the novel's emotional nucleus.
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Superb
- By Macala Shon on 01-26-21
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Memories of Another Day
- By: Harold Robbins
- Narrated by: Stephen Bowlby
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Born to a life of violence and tragedy, Dan becomes one of the most powerful and dangerous labor organizers in the country - at the expense of his personal relationships. He's a man who embraced violence, fierce ambition, lust and a deep hunger for justice even as he accumulated personal wealth, fame, and power.
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Good story too much unnecessary sex
- By J. Veinot on 08-14-17
By: Harold Robbins
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79 Park Avenue
- By: Harold Robbins
- Narrated by: Julia Duvall, Rick Slade
- Length: 8 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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79 Park Avenue starts on the seedy streets of inner New York City and ends on luxurious Park Avenue. Over time Marja claws her way from street urchin to stripper, ultimately becoming the madam of a Mob-owned pleasure empire. Marja--now known as Maryann--provides access to the city's most exciting and sensual escorts. But when Maryann runs afoul of the law, endangering her empire and angering the Mob, she must face an ambitious prosecutor who stands to benefit by bringing down the call-girl ring.
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Good novel from 65 years ago!
- By Wayne on 08-27-20
By: Harold Robbins
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The Grand Dark
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of the Sandman Slim series, a lush, dark, stand-alone fantasy built off the insurgent tradition of China Mieville and M. John Harrison - a subversive tale that immerses us in a world where the extremes of bleakness and beauty exist together in dangerous harmony in a city on the edge of civility and chaos. The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair.
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Kadrey does it again!
- By Lilah Quinn on 06-14-19
By: Richard Kadrey
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Pale Horse, Pale Rider
- Three Short Novels
- By: Katherine Anne Porter
- Narrated by: Chelsea Stephens
- Length: 6 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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The classic 1939 collection of three novellas by the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author and journalist, including the famous title story set during the influenza epidemic of 1918.
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Some of the most brilliant prose ever written
- By Anonymous User on 03-21-23
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Peyton Place
- By: Grace Metalious
- Narrated by: Tim O'Connor
- Length: 16 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1956, when this novel was first published, communities all over New England snapped up copies to see if they were the town portrayed in the book. Peyton Place is the story of a repressive New England town known for its high standards of public morality, and the steamy sexual activities that take place behind its bedroom doors.
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Best book I've read to date!
- By Crusader on 11-07-11
By: Grace Metalious
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City Boy
- The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder
- By: Herman Wouk
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 12 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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An "enormously entertaining" portrait of "a Bronx Tom Sawyer" (San Francisco Chronicle), City Boy is a sharp and moving novel of boyhood from Pulitzer Prize winner Herman Wouk.
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I wanted the next adventure of Herbie Bookbinder!
- By Lucie Batte on 03-17-22
By: Herman Wouk
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A Lush and Seething Hell
- Two Tales of Cosmic Horror
- By: John Hornor Jacobs
- Narrated by: Almarie Guerra, MacLeod Andrews
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The award-winning and critically-acclaimed master of horror returns with a pair of chilling tales - both never-before-published in print or audio - that examine the violence and depravity of the human condition. Bringing together his acclaimed novella The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky and an all-new short novel My Heart Struck Sorrow, John Hornor Jacobs turns his fertile imagination to the evil that breeds within the human soul.
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Great idea, tarnished by modern politics
- By Phil on 04-28-21
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Player Piano
- By: Kurt Vonnegut
- Narrated by: Christian Rummel
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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Kurt Vonnegut's first novel spins the chilling tale of engineer Paul Proteus, who must find a way to live in a world dominated by a supercomputer and run completely by machines. Paul's rebellion is vintage Vonnegut – wildly funny, deadly serious, and terrifyingly close to reality.
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A Genuine 5-Stars
- By R.A. on 06-07-19
By: Kurt Vonnegut
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Another Country
- By: James Baldwin
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 16 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France, Another Country tells the story of the suicide of jazz-musician Rufus Scott and the friends who search for an understanding of his life and death, discovering uncomfortable truths about themselves along the way. Another Country is a work that is as powerful today as it was 40 years ago - and expertly narrated by Dion Graham.
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Powerful and sad
- By Kenneth on 04-10-09
By: James Baldwin
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Once a brilliant scientist, Griffin has been gradually consumed by his research. When he finally achieves his goal, the final result is his departure from humanity. He feels no remorse in using his invisibility to gratify his increasing desires. As he gradually loses his mind, it is hard to determine if it is a result of his chemical concoction, or just a continuation of his moral decline.
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Lifesaver during final exams.
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One of the 20th century's enduring works, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a widely beloved and acclaimed novel known throughout the world and the ultimate achievement in a Nobel Prize-winning career. The novel tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. Rich and brilliant, it is a chronicle of life, death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the beautiful, ridiculous, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America.
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What in the heck happened?????
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What listeners say about Invisible Man
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- E. Pearson
- 11-23-11
How Did This Escape Me?
I've never been one to deplore my lack of quality education in public school. I figured that whatever I missed was likely due to inattentiveness and lack of inquisitiveness on my part; but after reading INVISIBLE MAN, I finally come away insensed! Angry and insensed that this book was not assigned to me as part of my upbringing. Even if I can forgive my public schools, then I must blame my private / public university and well-heeled graduate educations for not at least trying to make me aware that this great literature exploring MY American background exists. While I was raised in the most caucasion of caucasion communities, I feel I should still have been made aware--by somebody!--that I needed to read INVISIBLE MAN!
Well . .. now that I've raved a bit, I must admit that even in grad school I wasn't always the most attentive of students. I was deeply involved in whatever topics were discussed at hand, and I wrote stellar essays, I suppose . . . but I might have been daydreaming the day(s) that Ellison's profound influence on modern literature and social and racial issues was discussed . . . perhaps. What a masterpiece. I will read and study it again, and do all I can to influence persons whose education I hope for to read it and read it well.
By the way, if a reader orders this after reading my rant here, please make sure you listen to the introduction. It helps. The book is exquisitely performed and masterfully written. Not only does it provide an essential piece in one's education, but it's also a great, entertaining, riveting, and even humorous in many ways, read.
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Overall
- michal
- 03-25-11
Overwhelming
This is a difficult book. On the one hand, this is a young man's story and it should be read by young people. The lessons in it are invaluable especially to those who might not have yet become aware of how power works; especially in the United States. I wish I read this just after getting out of high school.
On the other hand, reading The Invisible Man and grasping what it is about is, I think, nearly impossible for a young person. To a young person (like a younger me) Ellison's wisdom would sound, I presume, like the rantings of an old drunk in a dive bar. It's a rollercoaster of things that sound embellished. If such a drunk starts to tell you of the terrible things he's seen and done you look for the exit. And so you put away the book.
Sadly, if we could pay attention to the drunk we would learn things that change our lives--not that Ellison is a drunk in a dive bar; far from it. The world might start appearing in it's true and terrifying colors. But we're too damn young and arrogant to pay attention.
The Invisible Man is a life-changing book in the same way. Reading it when young is impossible, and reading when old excruciating. Brilliantly, this is precisely the dilemma of the protagonist, who doesn't see 'it' until it is too late.
I can't think of a comperable American novel. Gore Vidal was absolutely right in saying that the 'Battle Royale' section in a different novel would make it excellent. In The Invisible Man, it's just one of a series of equally eye-opening vignettes about America and Americans.
And this is not a book just about being black in America. To say so is an injustice to its brilliance. Ellison's insights can and should be generalized to all the relationships between the haves and the have-nots. Most of all, to the power dynamics between the young hungry masses and the old satiated elites. The protagonist's journey is a story of any young person's confrontation with real power. This is Kafka with an AK-47.
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- Robert
- 02-08-11
You've been waiting, buy it, you won't be sorry...
Ralph Ellison's masterpiece comes to life in the hands and voices of Joe Morton. The author's prose is alive, urgent, commanding of your attention.
This is a reading which perfectly matches narrator to subject matter. Mr. Morton is to be commended for his dazzling ability to traverse generation, race, nationality, gender and regional dialects with ease, often in the same sentence. Many passages which deal with multiple voices, the narrator along with other speakers, are confronted with natural ease and pacing. I found, on several occasions, I had to pleasantly remind myself there was only one person responsible for the many clearly identifiable characters.
Invisible Man's absence from the Audible catalog has finally been rectified, and thankfully it has been given the reading and treatment it deserves.
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- Imhokhai
- 03-04-13
Masterfully written; perfectly narrated
What made the experience of listening to Invisible Man the most enjoyable?
It is a compelling story, full of the suspense and uncertainty that could plague any invisible man. It is also a fascinating guided tour of the main character's feelings: how invisibility feels to him, and how he feels about the fact that he is invisible.
What was one of the most memorable moments of Invisible Man?
The moment when the main character experiences his second major surprise; when he realizes that he had still been running.
What about Joe Morton’s performance did you like?
It was perfect. At no point did I notice that the book was being narrated. I felt all through that the voice I was hearing was that of the main character.
Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
I did not have an "extreme" reaction to the book, but I feel that it is one of the most memorable books that I will ever read.
Any additional comments?
This book is more than a mere good story or complex opinion piece. I feel that to fully appreciate this work, one must be ready to openly contemplate the themes therein.
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- DCtoMI
- 04-18-12
Brilliant!
I remember seeing this book on my parents' bookshelf when I was a kid. I don't know what made me finally decide to check it out, but I am SO glad that I did! First of all, Ellison's writing is phenomenal. So vivid and bursting with rich, poetic detail. Second, actor Joe Morton's narration was so stunning and passionate, I felt like I was listening to a stage play. His performance was genius! Another reviewer mentioned that this was well worth getting and I couldn't agree more. It's a masterpiece.
Ellison's social commentary is sadly, still applicable today in some ways. But this story is told in a way that doesn't preach to the reader. Just enlightens. It is a fantastic listen--bravo to both Ellison and Morton.
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- Shoeaddict
- 01-09-11
Boring
For some reason I thought I would get this book because I'm black, but I realize race just wasn't enough to enjoy it. I'm ashamed to say I couldnt get past the first 3hrs, it just sound like rants, raves, and rambling. I keep saying to myself 1hr, ok 30m, then I said 90m and that's it! Even that was torture, I hope you have better luck.
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- Chaz
- 09-23-11
This Great American Novel
Joe Morton lives and breathes this wonderful look into the life of an exceptional American who tells a story of life in this country. We couldn't have had a better, more passionate narrator.
Ellison delivers to us a rare glimpse into the lives of those who truly depict the soul of America and the state of the country in all its savage complexity and psychopathic depravity. The man with no name is all of us. Ellison says, in one book, what many great novelists take their entire careers to say. This is America at the crossroads and at the beginning of modern American civil rights.
It's a great book and a superb production.
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- Darwin8u
- 03-01-20
Sometimes it is best not to awaken them...
“I remember that I'm invisible and walk softly so as not awake the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers.”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
I can't believe I waited so long to read this. But part of me thinks I needed to wait to read this. Maybe, and this is hard to admit, maybe I wasn't ready for Ralph Ellison's masterpiece in my twenties or thirties. It was a fever dream. A jazz narrative. A hallucination of pain, beauty, struggle, and life. It was a Hegelian dialectic. It was a black whale just as real as Melville's Moby Dick. It still has me firmly in its grip. There are scenes in this book that are burnt into my mind and tattooed on my soul.
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- MA Quahaug
- 08-23-17
My volume control had a work-out!
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
I would recommend reading, rather than listening to this book. Joe Morton had a variety of wonderful voices; however, the volume of characters other than the narrator were quite loud. I had to keep turning the volume up and down - if I adjusted for the narrator, then many characters sounded extremely loud. Especially when in the car, I had to continually adjust the volume so not to destroy my ears. This was too long of a book to have that problem.
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- Wayne
- 11-22-16
A true American classic that I love!
First, thank you Don Katz and Audible for making this novel available to Audible members at no cost. Had I known it was available and narrated by Joe Morton I would have happily used an Audible credit. Next, thank you actor Joe Morton for narrating Invisible Man. It has been almost 15 years since I listened your magnificent voice narrate an audio novel and then it was on tape. You set the standard for narration of audiobooks to which the best today aspire.
At this point I have listened to 5 hours of this 19+ hour audio novel, but I first read Invisible Man during the late fall of 1961 during my first semester in college at UNC-Chapel Hill. That was 55 years ago and it was almost a decade after the novel was first published.
For those who have not listened to or read Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man there lies ahead not just a great novel, but a unique one that is literally unlike any other. There is no use looking for comparisons; they do not exist. It is written in the first person of the protagonist who is never identified by any name other than singular pronouns. The novel is as complex as any you will ever encounter. The protagonist is literally invisible (except to some other "Negros"), but he can react to and physically impact through his actions the world around him. The author and the protagonist are black males and the time period begins in the Jim Crow south and moves to the equally, but differently, racist north, so race is a key facet of the novel. But to say race is the only key facet of the novel would be incorrect. Listen to this unique and uniquely beautiful and troubling audio novel narrated by the very best.
The author is of course Ralph Ellison and it is his only novel although he did release two books of essays. The book is best understood as a semi biographical novel. When Ellison began to write Invisible man he was approximately 35 years old and had moved from Alabama to New York City well over a decade earlier (most of his youth was in Oklahoma). WWII had ended and Ellison's involvement with Communism was in his past. He clearly viewed fictional literature as far more than an art form; he viewed it as an instrument for change. Today Ellison is remembered most for this novel and for his teaching at various universities.
Listen and understand the perspective of a black man! By the way, if you have not listened to Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin I highly recommend it and the cost at Audible is $5.95. It presents the a view of horrid racism mixed with some unexpected kindnesses in the Jim Crow south where I grew up better and more completely than any book I have read. I'm white but our closest neighbors and friends were a black family. Black Like Me is raw and real.
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