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
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.