Down by the Riverside: An unflinching novella of race and power in the American South, from the author of Native Son and Black Boy (Brief Encounters) - Softcover

Wright, Richard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1529986028 ISBN 13: 9781529986020

Publisher: Vintage Classics, 2026

Synopsis

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

About this title

About the Author

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908, to a sharecropping family of ex-­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.

Edition details

• Publisher: Vintage Classics
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1529986028
• ISBN 13: 9781529986020
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 96