Literary Fiction · ThoughtfulAn unnamed Black man in a room lit with stolen electricity tells how he became invisible
Invisible Man
An unnamed narrator in an underground room explains what it means to be socially invisible
The narrator is an unnamed Black man. He begins in an underground room lit by electricity secretly taken from the city's grid, describes how he lives, and then tells his life story, starting with his teenage years in a small Southern town and moving on to New York, including Harlem. Ellison began writing the book in the summer of 1945 in a barn in Vermont and spent about five years on it.
More about this book
Who
An unnamed Black man who looks back on his life.
World
An underground room, a small Southern town in his youth, and later New York, including Harlem.
What makes it different
The "Battle Royal" scene was printed in the British magazine Horizon in 1947, years before the book. The novel deals with social invisibility, individuality and identity.
Feel
Searching and wide-ranging. In 1953 Ellison became the first African-American writer to win the National Book Award for Fiction.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Further reading
- Invisible ManWikipedia