The Outsider - by Richard Wright (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From Richard Wright, one of the most powerful, acclaimed, and essential American authors of the twentieth century, comes a compelling story of one man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem.

Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself--a man of superior intellect who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes. The Outsider is an important work of fiction that depicts American racism and its devastating consequences in raw and unflinching terms. Brilliantly imagined and frighteningly prescient, it is an epic exploration of the tragic roots of criminal behavior.

From the Back Cover

Cross Damon is a man at odds with society and with himself--a man of superior intellect who hungers for peace but who brings terror and destruction wherever he goes.

From Richard Wright, one of the most powerful, acclaimed, and essential American authors of the twentieth century, comes a compelling story of a black man's attempt to escape his past and start anew in Harlem. The Outsider is an important work of fiction that depicts American racism and its devastating consequences in raw and unflinching terms. At once brilliantly imagined and frighteningly prescient, it is an epic exploration of the tragic roots of criminal behavior.

Review Quotes

"The Outsider is a prophetic book . . . a book people should ponder." - New York Times

"Wright created in this fast-paced, riveting narrative...one of the most complex characters in African-American fiction: a black intellectual, freed of his past, who plays out the Sartrean belief that 'Existence precedes essence.' " - Chicago Tribune Books

"The novel, which builds steadily to a clamorous denunciation of the rival totalitarianisms of Communism and Fascism, also offers a dire and accurate prediction of a worldwide revival of religious fundamentalism in response to the spiritual gloom spawned by these monoliths.... The Library of America decided to publish the final typescript of the novel as submitted by Wright. It restored all the passages pulled by the copyeditor, as well as his or her other changes." - Alfred Kazin, New York Times Book Review

"It is in the description of action. . . that Mr. Wright excels, not merely because he can make the reader see but because he compels him to participate. There is not a murder in the book that the reader, at the moment of reading about it, does not feel that he would have committed under the same circumstances. Nor is the sense of participation limited to the dramatic scenes. . . . The expression of ideas becomes a form of action in which one is swept along. . . . [The Outsider] challenges the modern mind as it has rarely been challenged in fiction. " - New York Times

"It is in the description of action. . . that Mr. Wright excels, not merely because he can make the reader see but because he compels him to participate. There is not a murder in the book that the reader, at the moment of reading about it, does not feel that he would have committed under the same circumstances. . . . [The Outsider] challenges the modern mind as it has rarely been challenged in fiction. " - Granville Hicks, New York Times