Romance in Marseille
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The pioneering novel of physical disability, transatlantic travel, and black international politics. A vital document of black modernism and one of the earliest overtly queer fictions in the African American tradition. Published for the first time.
A Penguin Classic
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice/Staff Pick
Vulture's Ten Best Books of 2020 pick
Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor. While stowing away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked in a frigid closet. Badly frostbitten by the time the boat docks, the once-nimble dancer loses both of his lower legs, emerging from life-saving surgery as what he terms "an amputated man." Thanks to an improbably successful lawsuit against the shipping line, however, Lafala scores big in the litigious United States. Feeling flush after his legal payout, Lafala doubles back to Marseille and resumes his trans-African affair with Aslima, a Moroccan courtesan. With its scenes of black bodies fighting for pleasure and liberty even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, McKay's novel explores the heritage of slavery amid an unforgiving modern economy. This first-ever edition of Romance in Marseille includes an introduction by McKay scholars Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell that places the novel within both the "stowaway era" of black cultural politics and McKay's challenging career as a star and skeptic of the Harlem Renaissance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Harlem Renaissance writer McKay's poignant, previously unpublished novel of 1920s black life in the French port city of Marseilles strengthens the legacy built by his novels Banjo and Home to Harlem. Lafala, a young and carefree traveler from West Africa, drifts "impressionably from change to change" until his heart is broken by Aslima, a Marseille prostitute. Lafala stows away on a ship bound for the U.S., only to be caught and locked up "in a miserable place" onboard, consequently losing both legs to frostbite. With the help of his lawyer and an American friend named Black Angel, Lafala wins a large settlement from the shipping company. More than the money, he wants his legs back, and lingers on the promise of the cork legs that will make him feel like a man again. Returning to Marseille to show his new self to his old friends in the "fascinating, forbidding and tumultuous" neighborhood of Quayside, Lafala encounters Aslima, and their affair resumes despite the increasing ire of Tintin, her violent pimp, and the machinations of others eager to get their hands on Lafala's fortune. Marseille comes to life in McKay's descriptions of Quayside caf s, frequented by a vibrant social mix of black intellectuals like the Marxist Etienne St. Dominique, white laborers such as the queer Big Blonde, and sex workers including the North African Aslima and her rival, La Fleur. This will move readers to consider large questions about the need to belong and the desire for love.)
