A milestone in American literature, Invisible Man has engaged readers since its appearance in 1952. A first novel by an unknown writer, it was a runaway bestseller, won the National Book Award for fiction, and established Ralph Ellison as one of the key writers of the twentieth century. "What a great thing it is," said Saul Bellow, "when a brilliant individual victory occurs, like Ellison's, proving that a truly heroic quality can exist among our contemporaries." Ellison was inspired by such writers as T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, Richard Wright, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Langston Hughes, and Mark Twain. "The Negro American experience," wrote Ellison, "is indespensible to any profoundly American depiction of reality. As fictional material, it rivals that of the nineteenth century Russians." This Modern Library edition of Ellison's seminal novel features an Introduction by the author, as well as a preface by Charles Johnson, author of the National Book Award-winning Middle Passage. --Jacket