Share
Imprint
- Virago
- Virago
- Virago
Virago Modern Classics, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
Long out of print, this incredible novel by the last surviving writer of the Harlem Renaissance, deserves to be discovered by a new generation of readers. With a new introduction by Diana Evans, author of Ordinary People.
INTRODUCED BY DIANA EVANS
'A writer of huge compassion and acute observation, and also of dazzling style . . . Her work is more relevant than ever' DIANA EVANS
'Timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender' EMMA GARMAN, PARIS REVIEW
'It's as though we've been invited not so much to a wedding as to a full-scale opera . . . She brings down the house' NEW YORK TIMES
You're on the brink of turning your back on your family, your community, your race, all for some white-bread fantasy you don't half understand.
On a summer weekend in 1953, the residents of the Oval - an exclusive middle-class Black community on Martha's Vineyard - are gathering for the wedding of Shelby Coles. The loveliest daughter of the Oval's most prestigious family, Shelby could have chosen any number of eligible men 'of the right colours and the right professions'. Instead she has fallen in love with a white jazz musician from New York - creating a shockwave that ripples across five generations of family history.
Weaving together past and present, North and South, black and white, The Wedding is an audacious, wise and shattering portrait of American identity.
More books by Dorothy West
Dorothy West
Dorothy West was a leading light of the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1930s. She founded literary magazines Challenge and New Challenge, with Richard Wright as her associate editor. She was a welfare investigator and relief worker in Harlem during the Depression. Her first novel, The Living is Easy, was published in 1948. Her second novel, The Wedding, was published nearly half a century later, in 1995, and was a bestseller. This was followed by The Richer, The Poorer, a rich collection of stories and essays that spanned her long life. She died in 1998, at the age of ninety-one.
Find a book you’ll love, get our Word Up newsletter!
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
.png?auto=compress&w=150&h=60&fit=crop&fm=jpg)
Hachette Australia acknowledges and pays our respects to the past and present Traditional Owners and Custodians of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Our head office is located on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.
