Passing

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, author of Manhattan Beach
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 *
Nella Larsen’s uncanny, tightly structured 1929 novel about Black female friendship, mirroring, deception, and class privilege. – Hilton Als * New Yorker *
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 *

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 primarily as a nurse. In 1928 her first novel Quicksand was published to great critical acclaim. Passing was published a year later. Her marriage to Dr Elmer Imes brought her into contact with the upper echelons of New York’s black society and she became an important female 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.

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