The Collected Novels of Charles Wright

**In this incisive, satirical collection of three classic American novels by Charles Wright—hailed by the** ***New York Times* * ***as “malevolent, bitter, glittering”—a young, black intellectual from the South struggles to make it in New York City. This special compilation includes a foreword by acclaimed poet and novelist Ishmael Reed, who calls Wright, “Richard Pryor on paper.”* *

As fresh and poignant as when originally published in the sixties and seventies, *The Messenger* , *The Wig* , and *Absolutely Nothing to get Alarmed About* form Charles Wright’s remarkable New York City trilogy. By turns brutally funny and starkly real, these three autobiographical novels create a memorable portrait of a young, working-class, black intellectual—a man caught between the bohemian elite of Greenwich Village and the dregs of male prostitution and drug abuse.

Wright’s fiction is searingly original in bringing to life a special time, a special place, and the remarkable story of a man living in two worlds. This updated edition shines a spotlight once again on this important writer—a writer whose work is so crucial to our times.