Quicksand

Born to a white mother and an absent black father,and despised for her dark skinHelga Crane has long had to fend for herself. As a young womanHelga teaches at an all-black school in the Southbut even here she feels different. Moving to Harlem and eventually to Denmarkshe attempts to carve out a comfortable life and place for herselfbut ends up back where she startedchoosing emotional freedom that quickly translates into a narrow existence. QuicksandNella Larsen’s powerful first novelhas intriguing autobiographical parallels and at the same time invokes the international dimension of African American culture of the 1920s. It also evocatively portrays the racial and gender restrictions that can mark a life. For more than seventy yearsPenguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1700 titlesPenguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authorsas well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.