Books available at the front desk while su pplies last!
\nRegistration is no longer required! If you would like to attend virtually please contact rmitchell@bentonvillear.com \;or cfitzgerald@bentonvillear.com&nb sp\;for a Zoom link.
\nBook Summary:
\nA majo r literary event: an explosive\, previously unpublished novel from the 194 0s by the legendary author of \;Native Son \;and \;Black Boy.F red Daniels\, a black man\, is picked up randomly by the police after a br utal murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct wher e he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he didn't commit. After sig ning a confession\, he escapes--or is permitted to escape--from the precin ct and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago.
\ nThis is the simple\, horrible premise of Richard Wright's scorching no vel\, The Man Who Lived Underground\, a masterpiece written in the same pe riod as his landmark books Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945) that he was unable to publish in his lifetime. Only small parts of it have appeare d in print\, and in a significantly redacted form it would eventually be i ncluded in the short story collection Eight Men (1961). Now\, for the firs t time\, this incendiary novel about race and violence in America\, the wo rk that meant more to Wright than any other ("I have never written anythin g in my life that stemmed more from sheer inspiration")\, is published in full\, in the form that he intended.
\n