The Collected Novels of Charles Wright: The Messenger, The Wig, and Absolutely Nothing to Get Alarmed About

The complete trilogy following the double life of a young black man in mid-twentieth-century New York: “Reading Wright is a steep, stinging pleasure.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

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 man caught between the bohemian elite of Greenwich Village and the seedy underworld 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.

© 2023 Harper Perennial (Ebook): 9780062966421

Release date

Ebook: 15 December 2023