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A review by monneypenny42
The Man Who Lived Underground by Richard Wright
5.0
This might be one of the hardest and harshest things I've read in a long time.
I would argue should be sold along side horror stories. A black man gets arrested foe a crime he didn't commit. Beaten up, tortured and forced to confess. He miraculously escapes and hides in the sewers. What follows is a crazy fever dream of a story.
In the sewer he seems to loose his humanity (which society by the hands of the policemen already took from him in the first chapter), his link to society and gradually descends into madness. In this growing madness he refects upon the outside world until he is ready to confront it all once again.
I will have to take some time to digest it all... It took me the longest time to get through it, it is so gritty and grim you need a lot of energy not getting sucked under by the grisly dark currents of this book.
I would argue should be sold along side horror stories. A black man gets arrested foe a crime he didn't commit. Beaten up, tortured and forced to confess. He miraculously escapes and hides in the sewers. What follows is a crazy fever dream of a story.
In the sewer he seems to loose his humanity (which society by the hands of the policemen already took from him in the first chapter), his link to society and gradually descends into madness. In this growing madness he refects upon the outside world until he is ready to confront it all once again.
I will have to take some time to digest it all... It took me the longest time to get through it, it is so gritty and grim you need a lot of energy not getting sucked under by the grisly dark currents of this book.