The pioneering novel of transatlantic travel, political controversy, and sexual confession. A vital document of twentieth-century black literature and one of the earliest overtly gay fictions in the African American tradition. Published for the first time.A Penguin ClassicSet mostly in the teeming Vieux Port of Marseilles, the narrative follows a range of characters uncommonly found in modern fiction: marginal figures who embody the most radical fringes of the Black Diaspora. While stowing away on a transatlantic ship, the homesick African Lafala is locked in a frigid closet, resulting in the loss of his frostbitten legs. He successfully sues the shipping company for negligence, and with the payoff travels to Marseilles to resume an affair with an Arabic-speaking North African prostitute, Aslima. Like many other characters in the novel, Aslima's conduct and perspective challenge even the relaxed sexual morality of the contemporary Jazz Age. McKay's cast list...

A monumental literary event: the newly discovered final novel by seminal Harlem Renaissance writer Claude McKay, a rich and multilayered portrayal of life in 1930s Harlem and a historical protest for black freedom The unexpected discovery in 2009 of a completed manuscript of Claude McKay's final novel was celebrated as one of the most significant literary events in recent years. Building on the already extraordinary legacy of McKay's life and work, this colorful, dramatic novel centers on the efforts by Harlem intelligentsia to organize support for the liberation of fascist-controlled Ethiopia, a crucial but largely forgotten event in American history. At once a penetrating satire of political machinations in Depression-era Harlem and a far-reaching story of global intrigue and romance, Amiable with Big Teeth plunges into the concerns, anxieties, hopes, and dreams of African-Americans at a moment of crisis for the soul of Harlem—and America. ...