Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

…the world is just as concrete, ornery, vile and sublimely wonderful as before, only now I better understand my relation to it and it to me.

From Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man

My undergrad professor, Amy Sage Webb, mentioned this book in class one day and seemed genuinely appalled to discover that no one had read the book, and very few of us had ever heard of it. Her words exactly: “This is one of the great dystopian novels. You guys are turds.” Okay, the last part she didn’t say, but if you were there you would have seen that she really wanted to say it.

But the part about Invisible Man being one of the great dystopian novels; not only did she say that, but she was absolutely correct. At times it reads like a picaresque journey from the south to the north shortly after the abolishment of slavery. At times it reads like semi-satire on early American hiring ethics. But at all times it reads with a conscious poignancy that so many novels lack these days. Every sentence bleeds purpose.

Stop reading this damn recommendation and start reading Invisible Man. Now.