For this February, here are two novel recommendations, each with its own distinctive qualities and characters, each compelling in its own way.
First is a twentieth-century classic:
Invisible Man
Set roughly in the 1930s, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man follows an unnamed African-American narrator as he recounts his early years—from growing up in the American South to his later life on the streets of Harlem, going from one job to another. He confronts the ideals of black nationalism and the struggles of racial segregation.
At first glance, Invisible Man appears to be a Bildungsroman—a coming-of-age novel. Readers can notice its outward-facing, “picaresque” nature, which embodies the ethos that have shaped our narrator.
However, just as important are the internal monologues of our narrator. He repeatedly struggles with his own identity. He exists as an invisible man amid the backdrop of a troubled society—one that seems to preclude him from his true self. Indeed, when asked about the “search for identity” of the protagonist in a Paris Review interview, Ellison replies, “The nature of our society is such that we are prevented from knowing who we are.”
The importance of this masterpiece lies in both its intensely personal—and powerful—voice of the narrator and its social commentary. It is rife with cold truths and tragedy. Yet it is also a poetic mirror on personal identity, black identity, and society all the same.
In the same interview, Ellison notes how “the understanding of art depends finally upon one’s willingness to extend one’s humanity and one’s knowledge of human life.” Invisible Man remains today as a powerful work of art in recognition of both society and the human experience.
Washington Black
Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan’s Washington Black is fairly recent, published in 2018. It is a Booker Prize finalist, and most recently, one of the final contenders for Canada Reads 2022. And it stands in contrast to Invisible Man, despite both being Bildungsroman-type novels.
Washington Black starts off as a historical novel, set in the 1830s. The protagonist, Washington Black, or Wash, is an eleven-year-old slave in a sugar plantation in Barbados. When his old master dies and the brother of his new master, nicknamed Titch, takes him in as a manservant, Wash’s journey into an almost fantastical world begins to emerge.
Edugyan vitalizes the clichéd tale of the escape from slavery with hot air balloons, Arctic expeditions, and a tinge of scientific exploration. The novel, however, is also one filled with a deep friendship and loyalty between Wash and Titch.
Washington Black starts by establishing the notion of “freedom” concretely. Yet as he escapes, and travels from the Caribbean to the U.S. to the Arctic and to Nova Scotia, the idea of freedom increasingly becomes blurred.
Who he is, and what “freedom” he aspires to, become central to his journey. This novel is a complex study of unconventional—yet striking—prose, of history, and of the human condition.