Ralph Ellison published Invisible Man in 1952, after seven years of work. It won the National Book Award the next year. He spent the rest of his life trying to write a follow-up, and never finished one. The first novel was enough.
The narrator begins by telling you where this story leaves him — underground, alone, lit by 1,369 light bulbs he has wired off the grid:
"It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was..."