Who wrote the novel 'Invisible Man'?

Ralph Ellison wrote the novel “Invisible Man.” The book was published in 1952 and became one of the defining works of twentieth-century African American literature.

Its unnamed narrator describes his struggle to be recognized as an individual in a society that repeatedly reduces him to racial stereotypes. The title does not mean literal invisibility; it refers to the narrator’s feeling that other people refuse to see his identity and humanity.

Ellison began developing the novel in 1945 while living in Vermont and working on leave from the Merchant Marine. An early section, “Battle Royal,” appeared in the magazine Horizon in 1947 before the complete novel was published. The book won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953.

A common mix-up is confusing Ellison’s novel with H. G. Wells’s 1897 science-fiction novel The Invisible Man. The two books share a title but have entirely different plots, genres, and concerns. Ellison published only one novel during his lifetime; his unfinished second novel was later assembled as Juneteenth.