10 Greatest Unfinished Novels

Ellison's first novel, Invisible Man, was recognised as a masterpiece immediately upon publication, and some theorise that the worry about living up to it stalled progress on his second novel. And yet, when eventually the manuscript was published, it was duly recognised as the major work it is.

Edited from over 2000 manuscript pages into a novel in 2010, Three Days Before the Shooting... concerns the life of Bliss, born of indeterminate race, who is raised by a black Baptist minister, yet in adulthood, assumes the identity of a white man and becomes a race-baiting politician.

There is still debate over quite why Ellison never managed to complete the novel over the course of the 42 years he spent working on it. He claimed to have lost parts in a fire early on, though evidence from letters he wrote to friends seems to contradict that. Some blame his perfectionism. Whatever the reason, when eventually published in its longest form in 2010, the imperfect novel was still recognised as a sublime piece of work with stand out passages and sections of true power.