Winner of the 1953 National Book Award for Fiction and often listed among the top one hundred novels of the twentieth century, this volume places Ellison's work within the contexts of the African American literary canon as well as within the broader traditions of American and world literature. Among the issues explored are questions about the "genre[s]" to which the novel belongs; the kinds of politics the work both explores and implies; the work's philosophical overtones and implications; and the ways the novel was received both in its own time and in subsequent decades.