Le Transfuge.

WRIGHT, Richard.

$975.00

Item Number: 50003

Paris: Gallimard, 1955.

First edition of this work by the author of Native Son. Octavo, original wrappers as issued. With the rare wrap-around band laid in to the front free endpaper. Presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the half-title page, “To Jack with all my best wishes Richard Wright Feb. 7, 1956 Paris.” In near fine condition, with the recipient’s name to the front free endpaper.

The Outsider is Richard Wright's second installment in a story of epic proportions, a complex master narrative to show American racism in raw and ugly terms. It was the kind of racism that Wright knew and experienced, a racism from which most black people of his own time could not escape, and it remained the central element in his fiction. The Outsider appeared during the height of McCarthyism in the United States and the advent of the Cold War in Europe, two events which had a significant bearing on its initial reception.