Down by the Riverside
Will be published approx. on 2. July 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-1-5299-8602-0 (ISBN)
Description
A flood brings not only rising waters but the full force of a brutal, racist world
With the Mississippi flooding, a Black farmer struggles to get his pregnant wife to safety. In the chaos, a single desperate decision sets off a chain of events that cannot be undone. Down By the Riverside is Richard Wright's unflinching novella of race, power and consequence. Starkly told and painfully resonant, it captures how quickly the world can turn - and who is forced to pay the price.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
With the Mississippi flooding, a Black farmer struggles to get his pregnant wife to safety. In the chaos, a single desperate decision sets off a chain of events that cannot be undone. Down By the Riverside is Richard Wright's unflinching novella of race, power and consequence. Starkly told and painfully resonant, it captures how quickly the world can turn - and who is forced to pay the price.
BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Target group
Professional and scholarly
College/higher education
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 197 mm
Width: 130 mm
Thickness: 10 mm
Weight
88 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5299-8602-0 (9781529986020)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Richard Wright was born near Natchez, Mississippi, in 1908, to a sharecropping family of ex--slaves. His mother was a schoolteacher but, abandoned by her husband, she had to resort to menial jobs to feed her two sons before suffering a series of strokes. During a childhood scarred by hunger, Wright lived in Memphis, Tennessee, then in an orphanage, and with various relatives. He left home at fifteen, returned to Memphis for two years to work, and in 1934 went to Chicago where he was employed at the Post Office before beginning work at the Federal Writers' Project in 1935. He published Uncle Tom's Children in 1938 and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship the following year. His other books include Native Son (1940), his autobiography, Black Boy (1945), and The Outsider (1953). After the war, Richard Wright chose expatriation and went to live in Paris with his family, remaining there until his death in 1960.