Books: Bad Nigger

NATIVE SON—Richard Wright—Harper ($2.50).

Richard Wright is a 31-year-old, Mississippi-born Negro who two years ago won a $500 prize competition with a collection of short stories titled Uncle Tom's Children. Among them were the most powerful lynching stories in U. S. fiction.

This week he dwarfed his first performance with a full-length novel, Native Son. Laid in Chicago, only a Negro could have written it; but until now no Negro has possessed either the talent or the daring to write it.

Native Son tells the story of a "bad nigger," coal-black, 20-year-old Bigger Thomas,...