It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves'
ralph ellison's blistering and impassioned first novel tells the extraordinary story of a man invisible 'simply because people refuse to see me'. published in 1952 when american society was in the cusp of immense change, the powerfully depicted adventures of ellison's invisible man - from his expulsion from a southern college to a terrifying harlem race riot - go far beyond the story of one individual to give voice to the experience of an entire generation of black americans.