Description
A Black man, Fred Daniels, is seized by police after a brutal double murder and subjected to relentless torture until he signs a confession to a crime he didn’t commit. When he escapes, he disappears into the city’s sewer system—an underground refuge that becomes both a literal hiding place and a searing metaphor for how violence and racism can trap a person in the margins of society. Written at the height of Richard Wright’s creative powers between *Native Son* and *Black Boy*, this long-unpublished novel confronts race, state power, and the machinery of coerced truth with relentless urgency. Alongside Wright’s companion essay, “Memories of My Grandmother,” it deepens the book’s exploration of memory, inheritance, and survival. A major literary event and a testament to Wright’s enduring force, this is a devastating, incendiary work that refuses to look away.
Available Editions
paperback
Library of America
Published Apr 20, 2021
ISBN: 9781598536768
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Details
First Published
2021
Language
eng
Content Warnings
Content and trigger warnings for The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright.