The Black Ball - Ralph Ellison, Penguin Classics

'If he only knew what it was, he would fix it, he would kill this mean thing that made Mama feel so bad.' Belonging and estrangement intertwine in these four lyrical short stories from the the author of Invisible Man. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson, essays radical and inspiring, poems moving and disturbing, stories surreal and fabulous, taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.