**NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER**
A major literary event: an explosive, previously unpublished novel about race and police violence by the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy
Fred
Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double
murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit.
After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the
city’s sewer system.
This is the devastating premise of this
scorching novel, a masterpiece that Richard Wright was unable to publish
in his lifetime. Written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy
(1945), at the height of his creative powers, it would eventually see
publication only in drastically condensed and truncated form in the
posthumous collection Eight Men (1961).
Now, for the
first time, by special arrangement with the author's estate, the full
text of this incendiary novel about race and violence in America, the
work that meant more to Wright than any other (“I have never written
anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration”), is
published in the form that he intended, complete with his companion
essay, “Memories of My Grandmother.” Malcolm Wright, the author’s
grandson, contributes an afterword.
