Despite the war, the 1940s was a bumper decade for publishing

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Reading lists

Books that shaped the 1940s

Native Son

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908, to a sharecropping family of ex-&shy;slaves. His mother was a schoolteacher but, abandoned by her husband, she had to resort to menial jobs to feed her two sons before suffering a series of strokes. During a childhood scarred by hunger, Wright lived in Memphis, Tennessee, then in an orphanage, and with various relatives. He left home at fifteen, returned to Memphis for two years to work, and in 1934 went to Chicago where he was employed at the Post Office before beginning work at the Federal Writers' Project in 1935. He published Uncle Tom's Children in 1938 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship the following year. His other books include Native Son (1940), his autobiography, Black Boy (1945), and The Outsider (1953). After the war, Richard Wright chose expatriation and went to live in Paris with his family, remaining there until his death in 1960.

Bigger Thomas has grown up in Chicago&rsquo;s slums, reckless, angry and adrift. 
 
A respectable job with the affluent Dalton family provides hope but sets him on course for a catastrophic collision between his world and theirs. Hunted by citizen and police alike, and baited by prejudiced officials, Bigger finds himself the cause célèbre in an ever-narrowing endgame. 
 
First published in 1940, Native Son shocked readers with its candid depiction of violence and confrontation of racial stereotypes. It went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America. 
 
&lsquo;In addition to being a masterpiece, a Great American Novel' Guardian 
 
'The most important and celebrated novel of Negro life to have appeared in America' James Baldwin 
 
WITH AN AFTERWORD BY GARY YOUNGE

The Man Who Lived Underground

***AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4's OPEN BOOK*** 
 
The 'propulsive, haunting' and 'gripping' (Oprah) rediscovered classic that exposes the dark heart of America for an inncocent Black man on the run from the police 
 
Fred Daniels, a black man, is randomly picked up by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago suburb. Taken to the local precinct, he is tortured -- until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. 
 
But when he sees his chance, Fred Daniels, makes a run for it. With the world now against him, there is only one place left to hide: Underground. Taking residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago, Fred's new vantage point takes him on a journey through America's unjust, and inhumane underbelly. 
 
PRAISE FOR THE MAN WHO LIVED UNDERGROUND 
 
'Propulsive, haunting...gripping' Oprah Daily 
'A tale for today' New York Times 
'Absolutely not to be missed' BookRiot 
'A masterpiece' Time 
'Wright's most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book.' Kiese Laymon 
 
The Man Who Lived Underground was a New York Times Bestseller on 24/04/2022

The Man Who Lived Underground is a masterpiece

Moves continuously forward with its masterful blend of action and reflection, a kind of philosophy on the run... Whether or not The Man Who Lived Underground is Wright's single finest work, it must be counted among his most significant

Not just Wright's masterwork, but also a milestone in African American literature... The Man Who Lived Underground is one of those indispensable works that reminds all its readers that, whether we are in the flow of life or somehow separated from it, above- or belowground, we are all human

Propulsive, haunting... The graphic, gripping book ends with a revealing companion essay that further explains the themes of this searing novel

The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any 'greatest writers of the 20th century' list that doesn't start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright's most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book

A tale for today... [Wright's] restored novel feels wearily descriptive of far too many moments in contemporary America

This is a significant work of literary fiction from a legendary author that's absolutely not to be missed

The power and pain of Wright's writing are evident in this wrenching novel. . . . Wright makes the impact of racist policing palpable as the story builds to a gut-punch ending

Finally, this devastating inquiry into oppression and delusion, this timeless tour de force, emerges in full... This blazing literary meteor should land in every collection

Resonates deeply as a story about race and the struggle to envision a different, better world. A welcome literary resurrection that deserves a place alongside Wright's best-known work

More than any other Black writer, Richard Wright recognized that understanding Black folks' relationship to the police is central to understanding racism

The 'propulsive, haunting' and 'gripping' (Oprah) rediscovered classic that exposes the dark heart of America for an inncocent Black man on the run from the police 
 
Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighbourhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from the precinct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago. 
 
This is the simple, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a masterpiece written in the same period as his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) that he was unable to publish in his lifetime. 
 
Now, for the first time, 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 full, in the form that he intended.

The Outsider

'Powerful as [Richard Wright] was - is - as a writer, nobody can surpass him in doing certain kinds of writing... He is courageous - he was able to look into areas that nobody at that time was willing to look at' Toni Morrison 
 
Cross Damon is disenchanted. At odds with society, and with himself, his idealism and sense of alienation have driven him to drink and incessant reflection. But when Cross is mistakenly reported to have died, he is suddenly free to put his ideals to the test - and a reign of terror and destruction ensues. 
 
 A counterpart to Wright's 1940 novel, Native Son, The Outsider is Wright's existential masterpiece. An epic exploration of criminality and oppression its publication established Wright as America's most daring, and damning writers.

Uncle Tom's Children

'Wright's unrelentingly bleak landscape was not merely that of the Deep South, or of Chicago, but that of the world, the human heart' James Baldwin 
 
Natural disasters, cold-blooded murders, political agitation - all haunt these dark, dramatic novellas set in an American Deep South still corrupted by its slave-owning past. But at the heart of each are the stories of the men, women and children whose resistance against oppression will come to define their lives. 
 
Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom's Children was Richard Wright's first published work. It would establish his reputation as both a powerful storyteller and a fierce chronicler of racism, violence and oppression in America at the time.

Eight Men

'All eight men and all eight stories stand as beautifully, pitifully, terribly true... This is fine, sound, good, honorable writing rich with insight and understanding, even when occasionally twisted by sorrow' New York Times 
 
Hunted by the police for a crime he didn't commit, a man turns to the sewers and a life underground. Struggling to get work, another turns to wearing his wife's clothes in a desperate last attempt. Finding himself the object of derision, yet another man buys a gun only to discover its true power. 
 
Here are Richard Wright's stories of eight men - black men, living at violent odds with the white world around them. As suspenseful as they are excoriating, they stand alongside Wright's novels as some of the most powerful depictions of black America in the twentieth century.

Black Boy

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension

Richard Wright's memoir of his childhood as a young black boy in the American south of the 1920s and 30s is a stark depiction of African-American life and a powerful exploration of racial tension. 
 
‘A compelling indictment of life in the Deep South between the wars’ Daily Telegraph 
 
 At four years old, Richard Wright set fire to his home in a moment of boredom; at five his father deserted the family; by six Richard was - temporarily - an alcoholic. It was in saloons, railroad yards and streets that he learned the facts about life, about fear, hunger and hatred, while his mother's long illness taught him about suffering. In a world of white hostility and subjugation it would be his love of books and pursuit of knowledge that would propel him to follow his dream of justice and opportunity in the north. 
 
A chronicle of coming of age under the racial prejudices of the American south, as much the story of a writer finding his voice, Black Boy remains one of the great, impassioned memoirs of the twentieth century.

Vintage Minis

Injustice

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between

VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
How to go on in a world where everything is set against you? With hope? In fear? Or, in violent struggle? In this gripping and disturbing book, Richard Wright weaves his own childhood recollections with those of Bigger Thomas - a young black man trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago, and unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death - to paint a portrait of insurmountable oppression. Through the strange pride Bigger takes in his crime, Wright brings us to confront the systems of justice we blindly assume are always on our side. 
 
Selected from the books Black Boy and Native Son by Richard Wright

Richard Wright

A flood brings not only rising waters but the full force of a brutal, racist world 
 
With the Mississippi flooding, a Black farmer struggles to get his pregnant wife to safety. In the chaos, a single desperate decision sets off a chain of events that cannot be undone. Down By the Riverside is Richard Wright’s unflinching novella of race, power and consequence. Starkly told and painfully resonant, it captures how quickly the world can turn – and who is forced to pay the price. 
 
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Richard Wright

Books by Richard Wright

Articles featuring Richard Wright

Books that shaped the 1940s

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