An Apple Books Classic edition.
Groundbreaking and unique even in its day, Claude McKay’s seminal novel reveals a raw, unvarnished portrait of Black life in 1920s Harlem that’s gorgeously vibrant and unapologetically hedonistic.
While risking his life serving in World War I, Jake Brown is shocked to discover the harsh reality of American racism has followed him and the other Black U.S. servicemen all the way to France. Utterly disillusioned, he abandons his post and eventually returns to New York.
There, Jake is swept into a thrilling, exuberant world where poets, gamblers, and sex workers share the same cafés and community lifts him up even as colorism keeps old wounds alive. McKay’s warts-and-all depiction of the Harlem Renaissance pulsates with a genuine sense of danger and eroticism that transports you into this culturally explosive time and place.
