Juneteenth (Vintage International) (Paperback)

Juneteenth (Vintage International) By Ralph Ellison, Charles Johnson (Preface by) Cover Image

Juneteenth (Vintage International) (Paperback)

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From the author of bestselling Invisible Man—the classic novel of African-American experience—this long-awaited second novel tells an evocative tale of a prodigal of the twentieth century. Brilliantly crafted, moving, and wise, Juneteenth is the work of an American master.

"Tell me what happened while there's still time," demands the dying Senator Adam Sunraider to the itinerate preacher whom he calls Daddy Hickman. As a young man, Sunraider was Bliss, an orphan taken in by Hickman and raised to be a preacher like himself. Bliss's history encompasses the joys of young southern boyhood; bucolic days as a filmmaker, lovemaking in a field in the Oklahoma sun. And behind it all lies a mystery: how did this chosen child become the man who would deny everything to achieve his goals? 

Here is the master of American vernacular at the height of his powers, evoking the rhythms of jazz and gospel and ordinary speech.

"An extraordinary book, a work of staggering virtuosity. With its publication, a giant world of literature has just grown twice as tall." —Newsday
Ralph Ellison was born in Oklahoma City in 1914. He is the author of the novel Invisible Man (1952), winner of the National Book Award and one of the most important and influential American novels of the twentieth century, as well as numerous essays and short stories. He died in New York City in 1994.

John F. Callahan is Morgan S. Odell Professor of Humanities at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon. He is the editor of the Modern Library edition of The Collected Essays of Ralph Ellison and is literary executor of Ralph Ellison's estate.

Product Details ISBN: 9780375707544
ISBN-10: 0375707549
Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: June 13th, 2000
Pages: 400
Language: English
Series: Vintage International
"[A] vastly ambitious informing allegory, an allegory made rich, as in Invisible man, with the sensory details of which Ellison was such a master."  -The New York Review of Books

"[A] stunning achievement.... Juneteenth is a tour de force of untutored eloquence.  Ellison sought no less than to create a Book of Blackness, a literary composition of the tradition at its most sublime and fundamental."  -Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Time  

"Juneteenth...threatens to come as close as any since Huckleberry Finn to grabbing the ring of the great American Novel."  -Los Angeles Times