Romance in Marseille
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Narrated by:
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Dion Graham
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By:
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Claude Mckay
About this listen
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
Buried in the archive for almost 90 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.
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A quick little gem
- By Susan on 02-07-12
By: John Hersey
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City of Girls
- A Novel
- By: Elizabeth Gilbert
- Narrated by: Blair Brown
- Length: 15 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Beloved author Elizabeth Gilbert returns to fiction with a unique love story set in the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Told from the perspective of an older woman as she looks back on her youth with both pleasure and regret (but mostly pleasure), City of Girls explores themes of female sexuality and promiscuity, as well as the idiosyncrasies of true love. In 1940, nineteen-year-old Vivian Morris has just been kicked out of Vassar College, owing to her lackluster freshman-year performance.
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A strong story
- By Anita Kristensen on 06-08-19
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Cocaine Blues
- By: Kerry Greenwood
- Narrated by: Stephanie Daniel
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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It's the end of the roaring twenties, and the exuberant and Honourable Phryne Fisher is dancing and gaming with gay abandon. But she becomes bored with London and the endless round of parties. In search of excitement, she sets her sights on a spot of detective work in Melbourne, Australia. And so mystery and the beautiful Russian dancer, Sasha de Lisse, appear in her life. From then on it's all cocaine and communism until her adventure reaches its steamy end in the Turkish baths of Little Lonsdale Street.
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A series that just gets better
- By Barbara Kindle Customer on 02-01-11
By: Kerry Greenwood
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Oil!
- By: Upton Sinclair
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 19 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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As he did so masterfully in The Jungle, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Upton Sinclair interweaves social criticism with human tragedy to create an unforgettable portrait of Southern California's early oil industry. Enraged by the oil scandals of the Harding administration in the 1920s, Sinclair tells a gripping tale of avarice, corruption, and class warfare, featuring a cavalcade of characters, including senators, oil magnates, Hollywood film starlets, and a crusading evangelist.
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an outstanding book
- By Gregory on 05-18-08
By: Upton Sinclair
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Bel Ami
- By: Guy de Maupassant
- Narrated by: John McDonough
- Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Guy de Maupassant is revered for his naturalistic fiction, which brilliantly captures flesh-and-blood characters as it evokes the most telling details of everyday life. Considered one of the finest French novels ever written, Bel Ami follows journalist Georges Duroy and his increasing stature among the Paris elite. With an immense thirst for power, Georges is not above an almost gleeful use of wealthy mistresses to achieve his ends.
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Bel Ami or how to socially climb in 1885 Paris
- By Neil Chisholm on 12-03-13
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The Grand Dark
- By: Richard Kadrey
- Narrated by: Vikas Adam
- Length: 16 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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From the best-selling author of the Sandman Slim series, a lush, dark, stand-alone fantasy built off the insurgent tradition of China Mieville and M. John Harrison - a subversive tale that immerses us in a world where the extremes of bleakness and beauty exist together in dangerous harmony in a city on the edge of civility and chaos. The Great War is over. The city of Lower Proszawa celebrates the peace with a decadence and carefree spirit as intense as the war’s horrifying despair.
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Kadrey does it again!
- By Lilah Quinn on 06-14-19
By: Richard Kadrey
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The Adventures of Sally
- By: P. G. Wodehouse
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Pretty, impecunious Sally Nicholas never dreamed a fortune could prove a disadvantage, until she became an heiress and watched in bewilderment as her orderly existence went haywire. Coping first with her brother's wild theatrical ambitions, then with the defection of her fiancé and his immediate replacement by a much more appropriate but strangely unattractive suitor, Sally finds that life in New York is becoming altogether too complicated, and a trip to England only makes the whole situation worse.
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Jerky, Choppy, Scrambling, Untidy. But I Like It.
- By John on 11-05-20
By: P. G. Wodehouse
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The Gilded Age
- By: Mark Twain, Charles Dudley Warner
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 16 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.
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An American classic, beautifully narrated
- By TX lilbit on 03-31-12
By: Mark Twain, and others
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BUtterfield 8
- By: John O'Hara, Lorin Stein - introduction
- Narrated by: Gretchen Mol
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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A masterpiece of American fiction and a best seller upon its publication in 1935, BUtterfield 8 lays bare with brash honesty the unspoken and often shocking truths that lurked beneath the surface of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great Depression. One Sunday morning, Gloria wakes up in a stranger's apartment with nothing but a torn evening dress, stockings, and panties. When she steals a fur coat from the wardrobe to wear home, she unleashes a series of events that can only end in tragedy.
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Wildly Uneven
- By David P on 08-27-15
By: John O'Hara, and others
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Burmese Days
- A Novel
- By: George Orwell
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 10 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Colonial politics in Kyauktada, India, in the 1920s, come to a head when the European Club, previously for whites only, is ordered to elect one token native member. The deeply racist members do their best to manipulate the situation, resulting in the loss not only of reputations but of lives. Amid this cynical setting, timber merchant James Flory, a Brit with a genuine appreciation for the native people and culture, stands as a bridge between the warring factions. But he has trouble acting on his feelings, and the significance of his vote, both social and political, weighs on him.
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A Sad, Fierce and Ambitious Colonial Novel
- By Darwin8u on 11-08-12
By: George Orwell
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The Beautiful and Damned
- By: F. Scott Fitzgerald
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 13 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Published in 1922, Fitzgerald's second novel chronicles the relationship of Anthony Patch, Harvard-educated, aspiring aesthete, and his beautiful wife, Gloria, as they await to inherit his grandfather's fortune. A devastating satire of the nouveaux rich and New York's nightlife, of reckless ambition and squandered talent, it is also a shattering portrait of a marriage fueled by alcohol and wasted by wealth. The Beautiful and Damned, Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda in 1930, "was all true."
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i loved it
- By Emily on 01-20-05
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Invisible Man
- A Novel
- By: Ralph Ellison
- Narrated by: Joe Morton
- Length: 18 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Ralph Elllison's Invisible Man is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching—yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it.
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How Did This Escape Me?
- By E. Pearson on 11-23-11
By: Ralph Ellison
What listeners say about Romance in Marseille
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Anonymous User
- 04-15-21
Delicious and memorable
Shocking book that was written about a century ago.
It could have been written today. The characters in this book will stay with me for a long time.
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- AJ
- 09-17-20
An important work
I picked up Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille as a Black History Month read. It contains an extensive introduction in which the reader learns a great deal about McKay and this book's long and elusive path to publication, having been written in the early 1930s, but only just now being released for the first time.
It's a turbulent story about redemption, revenge and strange loves gone astray. Touted as a forerunner of pro-disabled and LGBTQ literature, this may not satisfy the modern activist's mindset. While the main character's disability is the focal point of the book, any references to homosexuality are polite-society played down. This is certainly not as strident and explicit as a James Baldwin novel. But of course, this predates Baldwin by a few decades.
Viewed from the literary standpoint, there are minor problems. Some of the characterizations are ham-fisted, slightly too two-dimensional. A bit more nuance would have done a world of good. Perhaps this would have been addressed if the full version of this book had made it to print. What we have here is a shorter version of the entire manuscript. It's all that has survived to print. It's a shame, but I'm thankful for what we do have. Romance in Marseille, the book and its journey to publication, is important to literature.
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31 people found this helpful
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- Cassandra Langer
- 02-16-20
Lush language, fair story, good pacing, excellent narrator
I found the story a little thin but the writing was lush and colorful. The characters and motivations could have been fleshed put more. His understanding of the various women’s motivations were stretched thin and his protagonist was far from admirable.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Chris
- 03-11-21
Skip the Introduction until Later
If you enjoy having the story minutely picked apart before you even read/listen to it, then the introduction and story notes are for you. They take up the first hour and 39+ minutes of the recording. After the first hour of the introduction I felt like I really didn't need to listen to the story anymore because I already knew everything that would happen. At that point I skipped ahead to the story. I wish I had known that was all coming and just listened to the story in the first place. The information about the creation and publication of the story was interesting, but better to wait until after you hear the story itself to hear all of the commentary about it.
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2 people found this helpful