The Man Who Lived Underground

Review "It might very well be Wright's most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book."-- "Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy""[A] masterful blend of action and reflection, a kind of philosophy on the run."-- "Wall Street Journal""Enthralling...timeless rather than timely."-- "New Republic""Finally, this devastating inquiry into oppression and delusion, this timeless tour de force, emerges in full, the work Wright was most passionate about...This blazing literary meteor should land in every collection."-- "Booklist (starred review)""Published by the posterity-minded Library of America."-- "Chicago Tribune""Resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world. A welcome literary resurrection."-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)""This astonishing novel [is at last] available to readers, fulfilling a dream Wright wasn't able to realize in his lifetime."-- "O, The Oprah Magazine""Wright makes the impact of racist policing palpable as the story builds to a gut-punch ending."-- "Publishers Weekly" Product Description MP3 CD FormatA major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel of racism, injustice, brutality, survival, and the American Black experience, written in the 1940s that speaks to our own times by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy. Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured and beaten until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. Daniels then escapes, and takes up residence in the sewers below the city streets. This is the simple, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a masterpiece written during the early 1940s, the same period as his landmark books Native Son and Black Boy, that he was unable to publish during his lifetime. A significantly truncated version of the story would eventually be included in the posthumous short story collection Eight Men (1961).Now, for the first time, this incendiary novel about race and violence in America, the work that meant more to Wright than any other, is published in the form that Wright intended. The book also includes as an afterword an unpublished essay that Wright meant to accompany the novel, in which he wrote: “I have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration, or executed any piece of writing in a deeper feeling of imaginative freedom, or expressed myself in a way that flowed more naturally from my own personal background, reading, experiences, and feelings than The Man Who Lived Underground.”  About the Author Richard Wright (19081960) won international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the black experience. He stands today alongside such African-American luminaries as Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison, and two of his novels, Native Son and Black Boy, are required reading in high schools and colleges across the nation.