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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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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
December 21, 2010 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780307917249
- File size: 537127 KB
- Duration: 18:39:00
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- Lexile® Measure: 870
- Text Difficulty: 4-5
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Reviews
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Definitely not H.G. Wells! Eloquent, passionate, sardonic, shocking and surreal, this first novel of Ellison won a well-deserved Pulitzer and has since become a classic of American literature. An unnamed African-American tells of how he discovered that he is invisible to whites and how he learned to make the most of it. Narrator James does a merely serviceable job here, sometimes misinterpreting the text and at no time investing much of himself in it. If he has not given us the tour-de-force the material demands, he at least has delivered the considerable beauty of the writing. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine -
This audiobook is a tour de force. The talented Joe Morton gives a virtuoso narration. Morton inhabits the novel's unnamed narrator and draws the listener into his remarkable world from the first to the last sentence. His exceptional portrayals of the wide cast of characters, ranging from a poor Southern black farmer to Harlem hipsters, white tycoons, and black matriarchs make this audiobook especially vivid. This iconic novel, which won the 1953 National Book Award, is widely thought of as one of the most important of the twentieth century. Morton rises to every occasion. Whether he's evoking the famous race riot scene or the harrowing episode at the paint factory--all is made real and memorable. This is an audiobook to cherish. A.D.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine
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