Fred Daniels, a Black man, is picked up randomly by the police after a murder in a Chicago neighborhood and taken to the local precinct, where he is tortured until he confesses to a crime he did not commit. After signing the confession, he escapes and takes up residence in the sewers below the streets of Chicago.

Written in the same period as Native Son (1940) and Black Boy (1945), The Man Who Lived Underground was not published in Richard Wright's lifetime. This edition presents the novel in full, in the form the author intended. This exclusive edition also includes the essay "I Chose Exile," which explains why Wright chose to leave America and has never before been published in the UK.