For more than two decades Richard Wright was interviewed by the American and foreign press, first as the author of "Uncle Toms Children" (1938), "Native Son" (1940), and "Black Boy" (1945), next as a famous expatriate recently arrived and lionized in postwar Paris, and finally as the seasoned writer of a dozen books. At the end of his life the young man from Mississippi had become a well-traveled intellectual deeply interested in the social and political...