Fifteen of the best political novels and plays

At the Guardian Tim Adams and Robert McCrum tagged fifteen of the best political novels and plays, including:

Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)

Richard Wright wrote to his friend William Faulkner that black and white Americans were engaged in a “war over the nature of reality”. The terms of Wright’s engagement in that ongoing war were set by his 1940 novel Native Son, which sold 250,000 copies in its first three weeks. The novel tells the story of Bigger Thomas, a native of the south side of Chicago in the 1930s, who murders two women, one white and one black. Its controversy was rooted in the case Bigger’s lawyer makes in mitigating his crimes in the context of racist oppression – that white society is also responsible. The book did much to politicise the civil rights generation and continues to be a key reference point for #BlackLivesMatter.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue