' The most important & celebrated novel of Negro life to have appeared in America'
- James Baldwin Gripping & furious Native Son follows Bigger Thomas a young black man who is trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago Unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death he is hunted relentlessly baited by prejudiced officials charged with murder & driven to acknowledge a strange pride in his crime Native Son shocked readers on its first publication in 1940 & went on to make Richard Wright the first bestselling black writer in America