Hippodrome

Set in a Chicago seething with physical and psychological violence, Cyrus Colter's The Hippodrome is an examination of power and exploitation and their entanglement with sexuality. Yeager has murdered his wife and her white lover. Fleeing the police, he is both offered refuge and held captive in the Hippodrome, a ghetto house where a troupe of blacks stage sexual theater for white audiences. Colter's subtle treatment of the subject matter, and his careful delineation of his character's motives, make The Hippodrome a classic of modern fiction.