In his ability to capture and present a whole stratum of society, Wideman has been compared to Dostoevsky, a comparison which is particularly apt in terms of oppression, revolution, and the internal workings of the human heart and mind.

Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1952) serves as precedent. In both novels the protagonists inhabit a subsurface, living lives and thinking thoughts which are invisible to the rest of the world.

For the characters in The Lynchers, though, their burst through to society is fraught with violence and despair.

When Wideman wrote his first two novels, he had no awareness of African-American writers. He had not read works by black writers, utilizing instead his exposure to the European literary tradition. In The Lynchers Wideman begins to draw upon an AfricanAmerican tradition, dealing with issues of crucial importance and resonance for African-Americans. He acknowledges in particular the influence of Richard...