Ralph Ellison

Ralph Ellison is justly celebrated for his epochal novel <i>Invisible Man</i> which won the National Book Award in 1953 and has become a classic of American literature. But Ellison&#146;s strange inability to finish a second novel despite his dogged efforts and soaring prestige made him a supremely enigmatic figure. Arnold Rampersad skillfully tells the story of a writer whose thunderous novel and astute courageous essays on race literature and culture assure him of a permanent place in our literary heritage. Starting with Ellison&#146;s hardscrabble childhood in Oklahoma and his ordeal as a student in Alabama Rampersad documents his improbable painstaking rise in New York to a commanding place on the literary scene. With scorching honesty but also fair and compassionate Rampersad lays bare his subject&#146;s troubled psychology and its impact on his art and on the people about him.This book is both the definitive biography of Ellison and a stellar model of literary biography.