A master chronicler of the African-American experience, Richard Wright brilliantly expanded his literary horizons withPagan Spain, originally published in 1957. An amalgam of expert travel reportage, dramatic monologue, and arresting sociological critique,Pagan Spainserves as a pointed and still-relevant commentary on the grave human dangers of oppression and governmental corruption.

The Spain Richard Wrightvisited in the mid-twentieth century was not the romantic locale of song and story, but a place of tragic beauty and dangerous contradictions. The portrait he offers inPagan Spainis a blistering, powerful, yet scrupulously honest depiction of a land and people in turmoil, caught in the strangling dual grip of cruel dictatorship and what Wright saw as an undercurrent of primitive faith.