INVISIBLE MAN: Ralph Ellison's 1952 bildungsroman follows an unidentified black narrator's journey from his Southern childhood to his education at a black college run by white trustees to Harlem in the 1930s, where he becomes involved with an organization called the Brotherhood. Here, he eventually finds himself at odds with this particular political group. Ellison paints a colorful, richly worded picture of a Harlem (and world) suffering through political, racial and economic turmoil, creating one of the finest works of literature of all time.