Continuously available in print since 1968, this novel has become
embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of
the book and hotly debated film. A literary classic, The Spook Who
Sat by the Door is a strong comment on entrenched racial
inequities in the United States in the late 1960s. With its focus on
the militancy that characterized the Black Power movement of the
1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man's reaction to
ruling-class hypocrisy in ways that make the novel autobiographical
and personal. As a tale of a reaction to the forces of oppression,
this book is universal.
Dan Freeman, the spook who sat by the door, is enlisted in the CIA's
elitist espionage program. Upon mastering agency tactics, however, he
drops out to train young Black Chicagoans to combat racism as Freedom
Fighters in this explosive novel.