Invisible Man cover art

Invisible Man

A Novel

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Invisible Man

By: Ralph Ellison
Narrated by: Joe Morton
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About this listen

 Selected by the Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of all time

Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching--yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.

After a brief prologue, the story begins with a terrifying experience of the hero's high school days, moves quickly to the campus of a Southern Negro college and then to New York's Harlem, where most of the action takes place. The many people that the hero meets in the course of his wanderings are remarkably various, complex and significant. With them he becomes involved in an amazing series of adventures, in which he is sometimes befriended but more often deceived and betrayed--as much by himself and his own illusions as by the duplicity of the blindness of others.

Invisible Man is not only a great triumph of storytelling and characterization; it is a profound and uncompromising interpretation of the Negro's anomalous position in American society. Action & Adventure African American Classics Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Thought-Provoking Science Fiction Social justice Africa

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Critic reviews

"A book of the very first order, a superb book." —Saul Bellow
All stars
Most relevant
Relatablility throughout.

Fascinating as a delve away from the academic historical literature.

it's a humanistic and polemic mix I think that the uninitiated like myself enjoy and find illuminates in much needed ways, particularly on his experiences in Harlem, coming of age among peers and community.

Overall a kind of 'what they never tell you at Sunday School', sharply more significant and culturally relevant for today.


The dialogue with and about characters, the references to Black historical figures punched through my modern apathetic TV age mentality on matters.

It works. It demands to read.

It's perhaps my longest Audible listen.

I want to read another Ralph Ellison.

Lucidity

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The battle royal get this going, onto a slapstick satire of the all black university life, to being lost in NYC, the paranoia and absurdity of the Unions and non-unionised Labour force, a bizarre medical episode of electrodes to the brain, pain and recovery. Onto the brilliant final vision of the science of the brotherhood (the communists) and their cynical use of the black folk in their world political game… Việt Than Nguyen’s The Sympathiser feels like it grows out of this amazing novel.

Ahead of its time

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Joe Morton's reading is quite simply the best I have heard on Audible. Thoughtful, passionate, funny and scary. The book is one that everyone ought to read--and is as timely now as when it first appeared.

A great performance of a great book.

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The novel was fantastic, and the narrator was just as fantastic as the material. Amazing audiobook.

A literary treat of style and great substance, narrated by a fantastic voice actor.

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I listen to a lot of audiobooks and my favourite narrators are Frank Muller, Richard Poe and Samuel West, but as an individual all-round performance I think this is the greatest I've ever heard, including Frank Muller's Moby Dick and Richard Poe's Blood Meridian. Of course it helps that, like them, Mr Morton is working with a masterpiece too

Mindblowing

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