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 and
television adaptations. A classic in the Black literary tradition,
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.
