Ellison's first novel follows an unnamed Black narrator from a Southern college town to Harlem, through a series of institutions and movements that each try to define him — until he withdraws underground to reckon with a society that refuses to see him. Blending realism, folklore, jazz structure, and myth, it became one of the defining American novels of the twentieth century. It won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.
Author: Ralph Ellison · Original publisher: Random House, 1952
