Native Son
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  • Published: 1 December 2020
  • ISBN: 9781784876128
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $29.99

Native Son

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1 Dec 2020
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1 Oct 2020
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Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright’s brutal and gripping masterpiece.

Reissued to mark the 80th anniversary of Native Son's publication - discover Richard Wright's brutal and gripping masterpiece this black history month.

'[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction' Ralph Ellison

Reckless, angry and adrift, Bigger Thomas has grown up trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago. But a job with the affluent Dalton family provides the setting 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.

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

WITH A NEW AFTERWORD BY GARY YOUNGE
  • Published: 1 December 2020
  • ISBN: 9781784876128
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 480
  • RRP: $29.99
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About the author

Richard Wright

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908. As a child he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, then in an orphanage, and with various relatives. He left home at fifteen and returned to Memphis for two years to work, and in 1934 went to Chicago, where in 1935 he began to work on the Federal Writers' Project. He published Uncle Tom's Children in 1938 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the following year. His other titles include his autobiography, Black Boy (1945), and The Outsider (1953). After the war Richard Wright went to live in Paris with his wife and daughters, remaining there until his death in 1960.

Also by Richard Wright

Black Boy
The Man Who Lived Underground
The Outsider
Uncle Tom's Children
Eight Men
Injustice
See all

Praise for Native Son

Before he was 40, Wright dominated literary America, publishing four books in seven years, each a triumph in its genre. His first novel, Native Son (1940), sold at the rate of 2,000 copies a day, making Wright the first best-selling black writer in the country's history. Black Boy (1945), his memoir of his Southern childhood, was a bigger success, selling more than a half-million copies.

New York Times

Richard Wright's Native Son is, in addition to being a masterpiece, a Great American Novel

David Mamet, Guardian

Unsettling urban violence from the man who was Mosley's inspiration

The Times

Native Son is the story of a young black man who kills two white women; and it was the first book - published in 1940 - to suggest that black Americans could actually get angry. When it came out, it beat The Grapes of Wrath in the best-seller lists

Independent

[Native Son] possesses an artistry, penetration of thought, and sheer emotional power that places it into the front rank of American fiction