The Stay-In Weather Sale: 20% off select books
Used, New, and Out of Print Books - We Buy and Sell - Powell's Books
Cart |
|  my account  |  wish list  |  help   |  800-878-7323
Hello, | Login
MENU
  • Browse
    • New Arrivals
    • Bestsellers
    • Award Winners
    • Signed Preorders
    • Signed Editions
    • Digital Audio Books
    • See All Subjects
  • Used
  • Staff Picks
    • Staff Picks
    • Picks of the Month
    • Book Club Subscriptions
    • 25 PNW Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books From the 21st Century
    • 25 Memoirs to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Global Books to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Women to Read Before You Die
    • 25 Books to Read Before You Die
  • Gifts + Gift Cards
    • Gift Cards & eGift Cards
    • Powell's Souvenirs
    • Read Rise Resist Gear
    • Journals & Notebooks
    • Games
    • Socks
  • Sell Books
    • Sell Books Online
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Find A Store
McAfee Secure

  • The Stay-In Weather Sale
  • Kids' Graphic Novels Sale
  • Our 2021 TBR List
  • Books That Got Us Through 2020
  • Winter 20% Off Sale
  • Save 20% on OBOB Books

Visit Our Stores


Jeremy Garber: New Literature in Translation: January 2021 Edition (0 comment)
Whatever your reasons, we’re certain you’ll find enough new books each month to sate even the most voracious literary appetite...
Read More»
  • Janice P. Nimura: Stand in the Place Where They Were (2 comments)
  • Eden Dawn: Three Winter Dates to Do in Portland Right Now (0 comment)

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##

Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison
Invisible Man

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780679732761
ISBN10: 0679732764
Condition: Standard


All Product Details

View Larger ImageView Larger Images
$10.50
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Cart
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Hawthorne

Awards

Winner of the 1953 National Book Award

From Powells.com

Black History Month

Staff recommendations, guest essays, and curated reading lists.


Black Lives Matter

Staff Pick

“I am invisible,” the narrator of Ralph Ellison’s award-winning novel explains, “simply because people refuse to see me.” Full of irony and wit and jazz-like music, Invisible Man addresses race, identity, individuality, and betrayal. It is the book on which President Obama modeled his own Dreams From My Father. Recommended By Gigi L., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

Invisible Man is a milestone in American literature, a book that has continued to engage readers since its appearance in 1952.  A first novel by an unknown writer, it remained on the bestseller list for sixteen weeks, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the century.  The nameless narrator of the novel 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, strongly influenced by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Joyce, and Dostoevsky.

Review

"With this book the author maps a course from the underground world into the light. Invisible Man belongs on the shelf with the classical efforts man has made to chart the river Lethe from its mouth to its source." The New York Times Book Review, Wright Morris

Review

"The Negro American experience...is indispensable to any profoundly American depiction of reality...This background provides the black writer with much to write about. As fictional material it rivals that of the nineteenth-century Russians." Ralph Ellison

Review

"A book of the very first order, a superb book." Saul Bellow

Review

"Unquestionably, Ellison's book is a work of extraordinary intensity — powerfully imagined and written with a savage, wryly humorous gusto." Atlantic Monthly

Review

"Ralph Ellison's novel Invisible Man, a work often cited as the American novel of its time." William Corbett, Author of New York Literary Lights

Review

"Invisible Man is an essential book, whether read as an intriguing coming-of-age story, an incisive portrait of an individual's quest for identity, or a powerful indictment of the absurdity of racism that remains fresh and relevant today." Sacred Fire

About the Author

Ralph Ellison was born in Okalahoma and trained as a musician at Tuskegee Institute from 1933 to 1936, at which time a visit to New York and a meeting with Richard Wright led to his first attempts at fiction. Invisible Man won the National Book Award and the Russwurm Award. Appointed to the Academy of American Arts and Letters in 1964, Ellison taught at many colleges including Bard College, the University of Chicago, and New York University where he was Albert Schweitzer Professor of Humanities from 1970 through 1980. Ralph Ellison died in 1994.

5 1

What Our Readers Are Saying

Share your thoughts on this title!
Average customer rating 5 (1 comments)

`
randyllewis , January 27, 2007
Great book!

Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No

(19 of 40 readers found this comment helpful)
report this comment




Product Details

ISBN:
9780679732761
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
03/14/1995
Publisher:
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
Series info:
Vintage International
Pages:
608
Height:
1.10IN
Width:
5.10IN
Thickness:
1.25
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1980
Series Volume:
no. 1191
UPC Code:
2800679732763
Author:
Ralph Ellison
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Blacks
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
American fiction (fictional works by one author)
Subject:
Afro-americans
Subject:
Race relations
Subject:
Afro-Americans -- Social conditions -- To 1964 -- Fiction.
Subject:
Novels and novellas
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
African Americans
Subject:
American fiction (fictional works by one auth
Subject:
Literature, Modern
Subject:
African American men

Ships free on qualified orders.
Add to Cart
$10.50
List Price:$16.00
Used Trade Paperback
Ships in 1 to 3 days
Add to Wishlist
QtyStore
1Hawthorne

More copies of this ISBN

  • New, Trade Paperback, $16.00
  • Used, Trade Paperback, Starting from $5.95

This title in other editions

  • New, Hardcover, $22.00
  • New, Trade Paperback, $37.95
  • Used, Trade Paperback, $9.50
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Instagram

  • Help
  • Guarantee
  • My Account
  • Careers
  • About Us
  • Security
  • Wish List
  • Partners
  • Contact Us
  • Shipping
  • Sitemap
  • © 2021 POWELLS.COM Terms

{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##
{1}
##LOC[OK]## ##LOC[Cancel]##