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Invisible Man, Juneteenth book cover
Invisible Man, Juneteenth
2018
First Published
3.92
Average Rating
848
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Together for the first time in a single volume: two classics of the modern African-American experience from Ralph Ellison. In Invisible Man the 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,” 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 that won the National Book Award in 1953. Juneteenth is the tale of Adam Sunraider who, as a young orphan named Bliss, was taken in by an itinerant preacher, Daddy Hickman, and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss’s history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? Invisible Man/Juneteenth is one of Barnes & Noble’s Collectible Editions classics. Each volume features authoritative texts by the world's greatest authors in an exquisitely designed bonded-leather binding, with distinctive gilt edging and a ribbon bookmark. Decorative, durable, and collectible, these books offer hours of pleasure to readers young and old and are an indispensable cornerstone for every home library.

Avg Rating
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Author

Ralph Ellison
Ralph Ellison
Author · 15 books

Ralph Ellison was a scholar and writer. He was born Ralph Waldo Ellison in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, named by his father after Ralph Waldo Emerson. Ellison was best known for his novel Invisible Man, which won the National Book Award in 1953. He also wrote Shadow and Act (1964), a collection of political, social and critical essays, and Going to the Territory (1986). For The New York Times, the best of these essays in addition to the novel put him "among the gods of America's literary Parnassus." A posthumous novel, Juneteenth, was published after being assembled from voluminous notes he left after his death. Ellison died of Pancreatic Cancer on April 16, 1994. He was eighty-one years old.

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