Tales - Amiri Baraka

These 16 artful and nuanced stories fall into two parts: the first nine concern themselves with the sensibility of a hip, perceptive young black man in white America. The last seven stories endeavour to place that same man within the context of his awareness of and participation in a rapidly emerging and powerfully felt negritude. They deal, it might be said, with the black man in black America. Yet these tales are not social tracts, but absolutely masterful fiction - provocative, witty and, at times, bitter and aggressive.