The Man Who Lived Underground

The 'propulsive, haunting' and 'gripping' (Oprah) rediscovered classic that exposes the dark heart of America for an inncocent Black man on the run from the police

Fred Daniels, a black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a brutal murder in a Chicago neighbourhood and taken to the local precinct where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After signing a confession, he escapes from the precinct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago.

This is the simple, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching novel, The Man Who Lived Underground, a masterpiece written in the same period as his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) that he was unable to publish in his lifetime.

Now, for the first time, this incendiary novel about race and violence in America, 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 full, in the form that he intended.

Considered too damning of American society to be published, The Man Who Lived Underground is a pacy thriller taking readers through the racial injustices of America.