Larsen, Nella – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk Henley-on-Thames Mon, 06 Feb 2023 17:32:29 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/cropped-Bell-Background-Blue-32x32.png Larsen, Nella – The Bell Bookshop https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk 32 32 Quicksand https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/quicksand/ Thu, 29 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/?post_type=product&p=26176

VINTAGE CLASSICS’ HARLEM RENAISSANCE SERIES

Celebrating the finest works of the Harlem Renaissance, one of the most important Black arts movements in modern history.

‘She could neither conform nor be happy in her unconformity’

Nella Larsen wrote two novels in her lifetime, both of which are collected here. The first, Quicksand, follows a mixed-race woman who runs from the fictional town of Naxos to Chicago to Harlem to Copenhagen. It becomes easy for her to leave behind places but the discrimination she’s running from is inescapable. In Passing, two childhood friends reconnect later in life. One, slightly more light-skinned than the other, lives her life passing for a white person, married to a flagrant racist while her friend observes uneasily.

Masterfully plotted and infinitely illuminating, Quicksand and Passing are two of the finest works of the Harlem Renaissance.

‘A beloved novel from the Harlem Renaissance that follows the fraught relationship between two childhood friends, one who passes for white and one who chooses not to’ Brit Bennett

‘Absolutely absorbing, fascinating and indispensable’ Alice Walker

‘Buy the book’ W. E. B. Du Bois

]]> Passing https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/passing/ Thu, 01 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000 https://www.bellbookshop.co.uk/product/passing/ Clare Kendry has severed all ties to her past. Elegant, fair-skinned and ambitious, she is married to a white man who is unaware of her African-American heritage. When she renews her acquaintance with her childhood friend Irene, who has not hidden her origins, both women are forced to reassess their marriages, the lies they have told – and to confront the secret fears they have buried within themselves. Nella Larsen’s intense, taut and psychologically nuanced portrayal of lives and identities dangerously colliding established her as a leading writer of America’s Harlem Renaissance.

The Penguin English Library – collectable general readers’ editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century to the end of the Second World War.

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