Winner of the National Book Award for fiction. . . Acclaimed by a 1965  Book Week poll of 200 prominent authors, critics, and editors as "the most distinguished single work published in the last twenty years."

  Unlike any novel you've ever read, this is a richly comic, deeply tragic, and profoundly soul-searching story of one young Negro's baffling experiences on the road to self-discovery.

  From the bizarre encounter with the white trustee that results in his expulsion from a Southern college, to its powerful culmination in New York's Harlem, his story moves with a relentless drive: -- the nightmarish job in a paint factory -- the bitter disillusionment with the "Brotherhood" and its policy of betrayal -- the violent climax when screaming tensions are released in a terrifying race riot...