Invisible Man

Ellison's unnamed narrator moves from a Southern town to Harlem, learning what it is to be unseen.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Ralph Ellison

type

Modernist / Bildungsroman

era

Postwar (1952)

language

English

setting

The American South and Harlem

parts

1 volume

Relative Scale in Novels

Core Principles & Analysis

• Published 1952; it won the National Book Award in 1953.
• The battle royal and the paint factory are its set-piece indictments.
• Its narrator ends underground, writing his own visibility.

Sources

• Wikipedia: Invisible Man