VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.

How to go on in a world where everything is set against you? With hope? In fear? Or, in violent struggle? In this gripping and disturbing book, Richard Wright weaves his own childhood recollections with those of Bigger Thomas - a young black man trapped in a life of poverty in the slums of Chicago, and unwittingly involved in a wealthy woman's death - to paint a portrait of insurmountable oppression. Through the strange pride Bigger takes in his crime, Wright brings us to confront the systems of justice we blindly assume are always on our side.

Selected from the booksBlack BoyandNative Sonby Richard Wright

Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908. As a child he lived in Memphis, Tennessee, then in an orphanage, and with various relatives. He left home at fifteen and returned to Memphis for two years to work, and in 1934 went to Chicago, where in 1935 he began to work on the Federal Writers' Project. He publishedUncle Tom's Childrenin 1938 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in the following year. His other titles include his autobiography,Black Boy(1945), andThe Outsider(1953). After the war Richard Wright went to live in Paris with his wife and daughters, remaining there until his death in 1960.