Richard Wright – författare

En av de stora svarta amerikanska romanerna

»En gripande och engagerande roman skriven i en annan tid, men trots det fortfarande högst aktuell.« Kajsa Bellander, BTJ

»En roman som förändrade den amerikanska kulturen för alltid.« Irving Howe

Tjugoårige Bigger Thomas från södra Chicago bor med mor och syskon i en förfallen lägenhet full av råttor. Det är 1930-tal, och en svart ung man har få möjligheter utöver de till synes förutbestämda: våld och kriminalitet. Han planerar ett rån med sina vänner, men det blir inte av. I stället får han jobb hos den förmögna familjen Dalton och står plötsligt främmande och språklös i en ny värld.Bigger har aldrig haft ett eget rum och förstår inte de vita människornas vänlighet. När dottern i huset, den hängivna kommunisten Mary, introducerar honom för sin progressiva pojkvän och vill umgås som vänner växer spänningarna. Han blir alltmer desorienterad, och frustrerad. Katastrofen verkar till slut omöjlig att undvika. Richard Wrights roman är en krass och skakande skildring av ett samhälle där en svart amerikan inte kan bli någon annan än den som omvärlden förväntar sig. I svensk översättning av Gösta Olzon, med ett nyskrivet förord av författaren Aleksander Motturi.

RICHARD WRIGHT föddes 1908 på en plantage i Mississippi och dog i Paris 1960. Han var i praktiken autodidakt, eftersom han tvingades avsluta sina studier för att försörja sin familj. Fosterlandets son [Native Son], hans första roman, utkom 1940.

»En av tidernas hundra bästa romaner.« Time Magazine

»Det finns ingen svart amerikan som inte har en egen Bigger Thomas inuti kraniet.« James Baldwin

A special 75th anniversary edition of Richard Wright''s powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a new foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson.

When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that “if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy.” Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for “obscenity” and “instigating hatred between the races.”

Wright’s once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him—whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and Blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he may his way north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to “hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo.” Seventy-five year later, his words continue to reverberate. “To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness,” John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. “Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear.”

One of the great American memoirs, Wright’s account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance—a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.

One ofThe Atlantic’s Great American Novels

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication ofNative Son.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

""The most powerful American novel to appear sinceThe Grapes of Wrath.""—The New Yorker

When it was first published in 1940,Native Sonestablished Richard Wright as a literary star. In the decades since, Wright''s masterpiece—hailed by Newsweek as ""a novel of tremendous power and beauty""—has become a revered classic that remains as timely and relevant today as when it first appeared.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s,Native Sonis the story of Bigger Thomas, a young Black man caught in a downward spiral after killing a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Written with the distinctive rhythm of a modern crime story, this formidable work is both a condemnation of social injustice and an unsparing portrait of the Black experience in America, revealing the tragic effect of poverty, racism, and hopelessness on the human spirit. ""I wroteNative Sonto show what manner of men and women our ''society of the majority'' breeds, and my aim was to depict a character in terms of the living tissue and texture of daily consciousness,"" Wright explained.

One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son.” —Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

This beautifully designed Harper Perennial Deluxe Edition—the restored text of Native Son established by the Library of America—also includes an essay by Wright titled, How "Bigger" was Born, along with notes on the text.

"A formidable and lasting contribution to American literature." —Chicago Tribune

Originally published in 1938, Uncle Tom''s Children, a collection of novellas, was the first book from Richard Wright, who would go on to win international renown for his powerful and visceral depiction of the Black experience. The author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, most notably the acclaimed novel Native Son and his stunning autobiography, Black Boy, Wright stands today as one of the greatest American writers of the twentieth century.

Set in the American Deep South, each of the powerful and devastating stories in Uncle Tom''s Children concerns an aspect of the lives of Black people in the post-slavery era, exploring their resistance to white racism and oppression. The collection also includes a personal essay by Wright titled "The Ethics of Living Jim Crow."

From Richard Wright, one of the most powerful, acclaimed, and essential American authors of the twentieth century, comes a compelling story of one man''s attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem.

Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself—a man of superior intellect who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes. The Outsider is an important work of fiction that depicts American racism and its devastating consequences in raw and unflinching terms. Brilliantly imagined and frighteningly prescient, it is an epic exploration of the tragic roots of criminal behavior.

“If one had to identify the single most influential shaping force in modern Black literary history, one would probably have to point to Wright and the publication of Native Son.” – Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic.

Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright''s powerful novel is an unsparing reflection on the poverty and feelings of hopelessness experienced by people in inner cities across the country and of what it means to be black in America.

This edition of Native Son includes an essay by Wright titled, How "Bigger" was Born, along with notes on the text.

A master chronicler of the African-American experience, Richard Wright brilliantly expanded his literary horizons with Pagan Spain, originally published in 1957. An amalgam of expert travel reportage, dramatic monologue, and arresting sociological critique, Pagan Spain serves as a pointed and still-relevant commentary on the grave human dangers of oppression and governmental corruption.

The Spain Richard Wright visited in the mid-twentieth century was not the romantic locale of song and story, but a place of tragic beauty and dangerous contradictions. The portrait he offers in Pagan Spain is a blistering, powerful, yet scrupulously honest depiction of a land and people in turmoil, caught in the strangling dual grip of cruel dictatorship and what Wright saw as an undercurrent of primitive faith. 

Three extraordinary nonfiction works by Richard Wright, one of America''s premier literary giants of the twentieth century, together in one volume for the first time, with an introduction by Cornel West.

Originally published in 1954, Richard Wright''s Black Power is an impassioned chronicle of the author''s trip to Africa''s Gold Coast before it became the free nation of Ghana. It speaks eloquently of empowerment and possibility, and resonates loudly to this day.

Also included in this omnibus edition are White Man, Listen!, a stirring collection of Wright''s essays on race, politics, and other essential social concerns ("Deserves to be read with utmost seriousness"-New York Times), and The Color Curtain, an indispensable work urging the removal of the color barrier. It remains one of the key commentaries on the question of race in the modern era. ("Truth-telling will perhaps always be unpopular and suspect, but in The Color Curtain, as in all his later nonfiction, Wright did not hesitate to tell the truth as he saw it."--Amritjit  Singh, Ohio University)

Newly RevisedThe Council of Christian Colleges and Universities Series

Stressing the biblical message of stewardship, biologist Richard T. Wright celebrates the study of God's creation and examines the interaction of the life sciences with society in medicine, genetics, and the environment. The author brings a biblical perspective to theories on origins, contrasting creationism, intelligent design, and evolution. Highlighting the unique nature of biology and its interaction with Christian thought, Wright demonstrates that Christian stewardship can be the key to a sustainable future.

This comprehensive work, one of a series cosponsored by the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities, addresses the needs of the Christian student of biology to align science and faith. It demonstrates that the study of biology penetrates to the core of human existence and has much to contribute to the construction of a consistent Christian worldview.

New York Times Bestseller • One of the Best Books of the Year: Time magazine, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, and Esquire • One of Oprah’s 15 Favorite Books of the Year

From the legendary author of Native Son and Black Boy, the novel he was unable to publish during his lifetime—an explosive story of racism, injustice, brutality, and survival. "Not just Wright's masterwork, but also a milestone in African American literature . . . One of those indispensable works that reminds all its readers that, whether we are in the flow of life or somehow separated from it, above- or belowground, we are all human." (Gene Seymour, CNN.com)

“The Man Who Lived Underground reminds us that any ‘greatest writers of the 20th century’ list that doesn’t start and end with Richard Wright is laughable. It might very well be Wright’s most brilliantly crafted, and ominously foretelling, book.”—Kiese Laymon

Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up by the police after a brutal double murder and tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from custody and flees into the city’s sewer system.

This is the devastating premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, written between his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), at the height of his creative powers. Now, for the first time, by special arrangement between the Library of America and the author’s estate, the full text of the work that meant more to Wright than any other (“I have never written anything in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration”) is published in the form that he intended, complete with his companion essay, “Memories of My Grandmother.” Malcolm Wright, the author’s grandson, contributes an afterword.