Dan Freeman, 'the spook who sat by the door', is enlisted in the CIA's elitist espionage program after a white senator decries the lack of Black officers in the agency. The first Black man in the Central Intelligence Agency, Freeman is given a desk job. Despite excelling, promotions are hard to come by as the token black in the CIA. Deciding he's had enough, Freeman uses the tactics he learns in the CIA to foment violent rebellion in Chicago, in a mirror image of the coups wrought around the world by the Agency itself.
With its focus on the militancy that characterised the Black Power movement of the 1960s and 1970s, this is the story of one man's reaction to ruling-class hypocrisy in ways that make the novel autobiographical and personal. As a tale of a reaction to the forces of oppression, this brilliant and funny satire by Sam Greenlee proves to be just as potent today as it was when it originally was published.
Sam Greenlee - July 1930 - May 2014- Sam Greenlee was been a novelist, activist, poet, screenwriter, actor, journalist, teacher, All-American middle-distance runner, martial artist, and talk show host. In 1952, Greenlee received his B.S. in political science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He later served as a Foreign Services Officer and was awarded the Meritorious Service Award for bravery during the Baghdad revolution of July 14, 1958; the civilian equivalent of the army's Distinguished Service Cross. His first and most well-known novel, The Spook Who Sat by the Door is continuously available in print since 1969, and has become embedded in progressive anti-racist culture with wide circulation of the book and its hotly debated film. He also wrote Baghdad Blues and several books of poetry and plays.
