Native Son

Wright, Richard

ISBN 10: 0099282933 / ISBN 13: 9780099282938

Published by Penguin Random House, 2008

About this Item

Ships from the UK. Former library book; may include library markings. Used book that is in clean, average condition without any missing pages.

Seller Inventory # 6674161-6

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Native Son
• Publisher: Penguin Random House
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0099282933
• ISBN 13: 9780099282938
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: Good
• Weight: 0.728 pounds

About this title

Synopsis

Discover Richard Wright’s brutal and gripping masterpiece.

'The most important and celebrated novel of Negro life to have appeared in America' James Baldwin

Gripping and furious, Native Son follows Bigger Thomas, a young black man who is trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. Unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death, he is hunted relentlessly, baited by prejudiced officials, charged with murder and driven to acknowledge a strange pride in his crime. Native Son shocked readers on its first publication in 1940 and went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America.

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.