The Man Who Lived Underground

Richard Wright's novel was first published 60 years after his death, although it appeared in short story form in the 1940s. It mixes a type of magical realism with trenchant social commentary, opening with a brutal section in which a black man is tortured by police into signing a confession to a crime he didn't commit. The man escapes underground, lives in the sewers of the unnamed city and pokes holes into basement walls to observe a variety of scenes and people. Ultimately, he finds wisdom underground, the wisdom of one who sees the hopelessness of daily striving, the false allure of religion, and the injustice and dishonesty of what was then a world at war. Such a man cannot be allowed to exist, obviously, much as the Counselor in Mario Vargas Llosa's War of the End of the World could not be allowed to exist. The world kills its prophets, even the genuine ones. A sad but bracing tale told beautifully by a great writer.