Passing
Published on 9. July 2020
160 pages
978-1-5290-4029-6 (ISBN)
Description
As dramatized on Radio 4 and seen on Netflix, Nella Larsen's Passing is a distinctive and revealing novel about racial identity, and a key text of the Harlem Renaissance.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition of Passing features an introduction by writer and academic, Christa Holm Vogelius.
1920s Harlem, New York. Irene Redfield enjoys a comfortable life, married to a successful physician. After receiving a letter, she reluctantly renews her friendship with old classmate Clare Kendry. Both are light-skinned black women but, passing as white, Clare is married to a racist white man who has no idea about her racial heritage. Despite her misgivings, Irene cannot resist allowing Clare back into her life. As their lives become more intertwined, tensions mount between friends and partners and this taut, mesmerizing narrative spins towards its devastating conclusion.
Part of the Macmillan Collector's Library; a series of stunning, clothbound, pocket sized classics with gold foiled edges and ribbon markers. These beautiful hardbacks make perfect gifts for book lovers, or wonderful additions to your own collection. This edition of Passing features an introduction by writer and academic, Christa Holm Vogelius.
1920s Harlem, New York. Irene Redfield enjoys a comfortable life, married to a successful physician. After receiving a letter, she reluctantly renews her friendship with old classmate Clare Kendry. Both are light-skinned black women but, passing as white, Clare is married to a racist white man who has no idea about her racial heritage. Despite her misgivings, Irene cannot resist allowing Clare back into her life. As their lives become more intertwined, tensions mount between friends and partners and this taut, mesmerizing narrative spins towards its devastating conclusion.
Reviews / Votes
A fascinating inquiry into the nature of race (and a window into the Harlem Renaissance) catalyzed by a chance meeting between two childhood friends. A page-turning classic. -- Jennifer Egan A tragic story rooted in inescapable facts of American life . . . Passing is the work of a highly talented and thoughtful writer -- Richard Bernstein * The New York Times * A short, easy, engaging read . . . as much as it is a revealing cultural study of the 1920s, is also incredibly relevant today. -- Lexi Nisita * Refinery 29 * A bitter, brave and astonishingly modern book. -- Tim Robey * Telegraph * Much-loved and much-studied . . . The dynamic between the pair [Irene and Clare] is dramatically limitless, an awkward, complex friendship between two women of colour both trying to survive at a time when their country is against them. -- Benjamin Lee * Guardian * Perhaps as much as anything, Passing is about victimhood, and the twisted way we sometimes claim to be the injured party to avoid the unsavory truth that some hurt is self-inflicted. -- Jessica Kiang * Variety * Passing asks who is allowed in certain spaces (and who is the gatekeeper of those spaces), and what happens when people are ejected from them, either by their own free will or an outside force . . . Larsen never set out to deliver answers; just rich, searching stories rounded in real experience. -- Kate Erbland * IndieWire * I was astounded by how haunted I was by Nella Larsen's words and world, I truly couldn't shake either. -- Tessa Thompson * Los Angeles Times *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
File size
0,37 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-5290-4029-6 (9781529040296)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Nella Larsen was born in Chicago in 1891 to a white Danish mother and a black West Indian father. She studied in America and Denmark and, throughout her writing career, she worked as a children's librarian and a nurse. In 1928 her first novel, Quicksand, was published to great critical acclaim. Passing was published a year later. Her marriage brought her into contact with the upper echelons of New York's black society and she became an important voice of the Harlem Renaissance. She was the first black woman to receive a Guggenheim Fellowship for creative writing. Divorced in 1933, she spent the rest of her life working as nurse. Nella Larsen died in 1964.
